Amazing Adventures: Black Widow
by Scottenkainen
Summary: Co-written with Morgan Abbot for Marvel Lab. It's 1971 and the Black Widow is an Avenger, still together with Hawkeye, and about to pop a big surprise on him! It's Marvel continuity with a real-time passing twist!
1. Chapter 1

"This Is No Time for Clowning Around!"

May 24, 1971. 2:14 pm.

Washington, D.C. The White House.

Natasha hated being late.

It was taking much too long to get in to see the Secretary of State. She had endured almost 20 minutes of run-around so far, but her patience was drying up fast. She had shown her credentials to Secret Service staff twice already. Certainly, her blouse, jacket, and knee-length skirt were uncharacteristic of the tight black leather jumpsuit she was commonly seen in while acting as the Black Widow these days, but her Avengers clearance should have been easily checked the first time. The obvious answer to all this was that the Secretary of State did not wish to be seen.

"Tell Mr. Katzenbach that I want to see him now," Natasha told the undersecretary angrily, but she was already starting to dodge around him and head for the door to the secretary's office. She only stopped when another Secret Service agent stepped out of the office ahead of her and barred the way. Natasha sucked in her anger and calmly said, "Fine. I'll go. Tell Katzenbach that he'll see me soon, though."

2:17 pm.

Nicholas Katzenbach looked up from the paperwork on his desk when he heard the back door to his office open. It was always unusual when that door opened, as it was (except in case of an emergency) for Secret Service use only. What made it even more surprising this time was that it was the Black Widow using it.

"How did you-?" Nicholas managed to ask as he rose from his desk in alarm.

"Well, I don't normally like to show off that I was once a fantastic spy, but..." Natasha answered in a warm, charming voice. When that failed to allay Nicholas' concerns, she changed to a calmer, soothing voice. "Look, I only came here to talk."

"No, see here," Nicholas said angrily. "You or any other superhero can't come waltzing into my office-"

And here he made the mistake of stepping away from his desk, as Natasha seemed too non-threatening. In that moment, Natasha lunged forward, grabbed him by the collar, and pulled him across the room. "Now," Natasha said in a firmer voice, "let's have that conversation away from your desk where you could summon help. That paperwork on your desk – is it from SALT?"

Nicholas glanced back at his desk, but tried not to betray an answer.

"When were you planning on telling us that you'd wrapped up the SALT talks, Nicholas?"

"The U.S. Government is not in the habit of having its foreign policy dictated by-"

"Oh, please," Natasha said, finally letting go of Nicholas' collar. "It's not like we were asking for a lot from you. You were told to keep MIRVs on the table. The SALT agreement with Russia only covers ABMs.* The superhuman community isn't happy about this. You knew we wouldn't be happy, so you let the Avengers keep guarding the conference in Vienna after it had already been secretly concluded, didn't you?"

"The Russians," Nicholas said, straightening his collar and regaining his composure, "believe that missile systems are their only defense. They still see you superheroes as an American threat."

(*SALT stands for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; MIRV stands for Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicles; ABM stands for Anti-Ballistic Missile system)

Natasha sighed, knowing he was right and for all the wrong reasons. She knew her former bosses in Russia were paranoid enough to believe that and the U.S. was willing to foster their mistake to give them an edge. Even if it meant the arms race would go on. Still, the superheroes had one carrot to dangle. "The superhuman community has moved beyond helping just one nation. Our advanced technology, both alien and otherwise, are available to any country that meets our requirements for human rights and peace. And don't forget to remind the President that we endorsed him and helped put him in office. If not for our support, we would have a Nixon Administration in place instead of a Humphrey Administration."

"I'll mention that," Nicholas said, though Natasha had trouble reading if he was serious or just saying that to appease her. "I'll also tell him we should be open to continuing the talks in the near-future. Acceptable?"

"It will have to-" Natasha said, but now it was her turn to be surprised by the back door to the office opening. She spun around to see the same Secret Service agent who she had slipped around earlier peek his head in.

"Excuse me. May I interrupt?" the agent asked. His expression was impossible to read behind those dark glasses.

"My office was broken into! Of course you can interrupt!" Nicholas shouted.

"Actually, sir, I'm here for the Black Widow. The CIA just called for you, ma'am. They say they have a lead on that spy you were after."

Natasha sighed again and glanced at the clock. First she was late, and now this. "I'll handle it," she said.

Washington, D.C., L Street.

3:38 pm.

As if being late wasn't bad enough, now Natasha had to deal with this clown.

The rooftop chase had started a block ago. He had already thrown two exploding juggling balls and still enjoyed a seven yard lead on her, despite running in big clown shoes. Ducking for cover had slowed her down each time when he tossed those balls. She couldn't risk getting injured. Thank goodness, she thought, that she had taken the time to change into her bodysuit so she was not running in a skirt - though she wished she had her "widow's sting" electricity projector with her as well.

"Eliot Franklin!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

The Clown stumbled as he reacted to his real name, as people often do when it's loudly hollered. He faltered, lost his balance, and quickly recovered, but not quickly enough that she did not gain on him. She put on a burst of speed, her sensibly heeled black boots pounding hard across the top of the building. Catching up, she leapt forward and managed to gasp a hold of the fabric of his clown costume.

Stumbling, he lost his hold on his last exploding juggling ball and it flew into a nearby chimney and exploded.

Natasha spun him around to face her and tried to punch him, but the Clown now had a hooked cane in his hand that telescoped out at the press of a button and caught her on the leg. Momentarily, off-balance, Natasha stepped back and took a defensive stance. "You used to be with the Circus of Crime," she said to distract him. "When did you turn spy?"

"What makes you think I wasn't always one?" the Clown asked with a smirk that was magnified by his clown make-up. He switched hands with the cane and pulled a 9 mm Browning automatic pistol out from under his polka dot jacket with his right hand. Before he could aim it at her she did a high kick that knocked the gun from his hand and then a hurricane kick that knocked him clean off his feet. The Clown rolled over the surface of the roof, his legs flailing up in the air in a comical fashion that was merely deceptively ungainly when in fact she recognized the man's movements were incredibly well-coordinated. He never lost his grip on the hooked cane. Twisting the handle of the cane, the hook popped off and revealed a big knife blade underneath. "You'll never take me, Widow," he said. "I've held my own against Spider-Man."

"Yeah, for all of five seconds, I hear," she said. Un-phased, Natasha slid under his hasty thrust, caught his arm and expertly jabbed a thumb into his wrist to make him involuntarily drop the cane while she threw him over her extended leg. He fell, tumbled, and again sprang back up.

His hand went to his neck and he spun his over-sized bow-tie in circles, causing a stream of hydrochloric acid to squirt out. As she dived out of the way of it, he sprayed more of the corrosive chemical at her. The roofing tile hissed where it landed and noxious smoke curled up into the air. Back-flipping to safety, she landed in a crouch only for him to tauntingly honk his red horn nose and resume his flight, this time with a greater lead than he had previously.

"This clown is making me look like one too," Natasha muttered in reproach of herself as she ran after him. She hated being off her game, but the truth was also that she had been underestimating him.

The Clown jumped from one rooftop to the next. After this roof was an alley that looked like it would be hard for the Clown to jump, but he grabbed a TV antennae, bent it back, and used it to catapult him over the alley as it sprang back. Natasha skipped the theatrics with the antennae, vaulted into the air from the roof's edge, did a triple mid-air flip, and came down running closer behind her quarry.

She could see now that they had just two more roofs to go before he ran out and reached a major street intersection he could not possibly jump over. He was either going to try to go down or feel cornered and make a last stand against her, she figured. But before she could see which it would be, she saw a familiar figure jump out from behind a roof access door on the next building. There was the familiar "crack" of an arquebus being fired and she saw the Clown being entangled by bolos fired from the modified antique weapon. The Clown went down.

Hawkeye casually leaned his arquebus up over his shoulder and sauntered forward. "Hey, it's the Clown!" he exclaimed. "This is no time for clowning around. Right? Clown?"

"Ugh, leave the jokes to Spider-Man," the Clown said.

Natasha leaped across to that roof and slowed down as she came within reach of the other two. "I know I didn't call for back-up," Natasha said. She kept a close eye on the Clown, not wanting to underestimate him again as Hawkeye was now doing. "How did you find us?"

"You're welcome," Hawkeye said sarcastically. "It wasn't hard. The CIA called Avengers Mansion first, looking for you, before they found out you were at the White House. I came to help, heard explosions on the rooftops, could tell they were moving in a straight line, and raced to get ahead of it."

"Not bad," Natasha said. "Okay, Eliot," she said, putting her foot on the Clown and pushing him down as he tried to free himself from the bolo, "stop fidgeting and start handing over papers."

"I haven't got the papers," the Clown replied.

"Ohh...you just have to make this hard, don't you?" Natasha asked with a groan. "Come on, Eliot. You didn't have time to stash the papers after I saw you leave the Mall. That means they're still on you. They'll turn up if we strip search you, but it won't be me doing it if that's what you're hoping for - it'll be Hawkeye here doing it."

"Gee, thanks," Hawkeye said sarcastically. "Do I get to see if you have any papers on you next..?" he asked leadingly, dripping with obvious innuendo.

"Careful, purple-pants," Natasha answered, matching his tone, "or your gun might go off..."

"Is that a promise..?"

"Don't you need to reload it...?"

"Oh, it's ready any time you are..."

"Maybe I should check you for papers in your ...ammunition pouch..."

"Ugh, I'll give you the papers!" the Clown cried. "Just stop flirting!"

The Black Widow and Hawkeye stopped their playful banter and watched the Clown pull off one of his big shoes and show them the secret papers inside.

"Shucks," Hawkeye said. "I guess we have to stop now. Think you can handle Emmet Kelly here without me? I've got to go get ready for tonight. Not much longer to go!"

"Go on," Natasha said. "I can take care of the rest." She watched Hawkeye skip the obvious stairs leading down into the building and go straight for the building's edge with the grappling hook-and-reel attachment for the arquebus. There was no hesitation – no urge to stop him. She would explain later about being late.

Washington, D.C.

6:03 pm.

Natasha walked slowly towards their table and not just so Clint could enjoy watching her in the short, black, off-the-shoulder dress she wore for him. She was sore all over from the afternoon's chase. She never would have been sore after a workout like that when she was still in her 20s, but she was 31 now and, while she was still in top physical shape, she felt old every time she felt sore. Clint, sitting at the table waiting for her in a nice suit, was still as ruggedly handsome as ever. He never complained in front of her about feeling older, but when he thought she was not looking he would wince from fatigue after a long workout or fight.

The table had a white tablecloth and a candle in a glass jar centered on the table. TK's was not a five-star restaurant like she was used to dining at back when her job was seducing rich and powerful men for her soviet masters, but it was as fancy as Clint was willing to eat at. Natasha recalled how hard it had been getting Clint to take her anywhere but hot dog stands and smiled.

"Ah, that's better," Clint said when he stood up and pulled out her chair for her. "I was wondering when you were going to start smiling, babe."

"Sorry, darling. I guess I had a lot on my mind," she said. And that was true.

"This isn't a working night, hon," he admonished lightly. "This is a special occasion."

She must have spent too long glancing idly at the menu because Clint said, "Don't bother. I slipped the waiter a 10 and told him to bring us two beers and hot dogs...Just kidding," he said when she looked up at him and smirked knowingly.

"Sorry," she said again.

"Hey, what's bothering you?" he asked, leaning forward across the table and reaching for her hand. "Is it that I helped you collar the Clown today?"

"No, no, it's not that. I was fine with your help, Mr. Barton," she said with mock formality.

"Glad to oblige, Mrs. Barton," Clint said back and then made a happy sigh. "One year today. It's sure been an exciting ride with you."

Natasha hated to spoil their anniversary dinner, but then, maybe this would be the best time to tell him, she thought. "Clint...I'm sorry I'm late."

"What are you talking about, honey? You were right on time for dinner."

"No, dear. I'm sorry. But ...I'm _late_."

"Late for what? ...Oh..." Clint said as his expression of curiosity turned to surprise and froze there.

NEXT ISH: The Black Widow is married to Hawkeye! The Black Widow is pregnant! Daredevil is…oh, wait, read next issue to find out! That, plus the evil of Zodiac and the Astrologer in "Find a Reason to Believe!"


	2. Chapter 2

June 14, 1971. Monday morning. Midtown Manhattan, the Barton's home.

Natasha Barton had not spent so much time staring at a toilet since '63, the morning after she and her late husband Alexei had a vodka-drinking contest. Although she had not tossed anything yet, she had been certain for the last hour that she was on the verge of doing so. There was no doubt as to the cause. This was the third day in a row she had morning sickness, though this was the worst day so far.

"Hey, hon," Clint said when he peeked around the corner of the bathroom door. "Feeling any better yet?"

"No…" Natasha managed to say, but by the time she turned her heard to look up at her husband, he was gone again. This was the second time this morning he had done that and it made her suspicious. He certainly was not the squeamish type. The only times he ever avoided being around her was when he was up to something and afraid she would read in his face that he was up to something, like last Christmas when he was determined to surprise her with her Christmas presents.

Now more curious than nauseas, Natasha grabbed the nearby edge of a laminated wood countertop and pulled herself up off the floor. She felt light-headed and braced herself between the counter and the wall, pausing until the room stopped wobbling around her. Recovering her balance, she moved through the walk-through closet to the master bedroom, pausing just before she reached it. She thought she had seen, out of the corner of her eye, the secret compartment in the wall of the closet was left open. Sure enough, when she pulled the hangars with Clint's pants on them aside, she could see the secret door was open and Hawkeye's rack of old bows and quivers of arrows were exposed. He had given up the bow two years ago when he felt he needed to upgrade his weapon to solve his perennial self-esteem problems, but still loved the bows and looked at them frequently. Especially before and after adventures. On a hunch, Natasha counted all of Clint's pants in the closet, subtracted the ones she knew were in the dirty laundry, and came up with one pair missing. This brought her some relief until she made her way through the master bedroom. The master bedroom was decorated on one side by James Bond movie posters and, on the other side, Alexander Deineka paintings. Before she left the room, Natasha turned back and spotted the missing pair of jeans, now discarded in a heap, behind the bed.

"Clint!" she called out. No response. It did not sound like he was still upstairs at all. She held perfectly still and listened. Their townhouse, a former consulate they now rented, was old and made a lot of noises. After a few moments of silence, she heard the squeaky floorboard in the living room. Choking back her nausea, Natasha slid down the railing to skip the noisy stairs. Creeping around each squeaky floorboard, she finally caught Clint in the workout room, hurriedly pulling on one of his boots – the last piece of his Hawkeye costume. "Clint Barton," Natasha said, having recovered enough to stand in the doorway with her hands on her hips. "Just where do you think you're going?"

"Oh… well, um…" Clint's mind raced a short moment for a plausible explanation as he flashed a smile. "I was just… heading out and…"

"In costume?"

"Oh well, it's just a conference I need to attend at Avengers Mansion. Regular business stuff, nothing for you to bother with, not in your condition."

"My condition?" Natasha blinked.

She saw Clint backing towards the front door and, hoping that she would not get sick again from doing this, made a sideways vault over the couch so she could reach the front door before him. Clint, seeing his escape route was cut off, backed away.

"Whoa, honey, should you be doing gymnastics in your-"

"I'm only two months pregnant," Natasha snapped. "I can do gymnastics. So why can't I go with you to a simple conference?"

"Aw, honey," Clint said, backing up further as Natasha advanced menacingly at him. "You know how you get!"

"How I get?" Natasha echoed with sarcasm. "There's something wrong with wanting to be your equal partner as an Avenger?" She looked around for something to throw at him and, being only closest to the couch again, picked up a pillow to throw at Clint.

"Hey, now!" Clint said, as if she was about to throw a vase at him. He held up a warning finger, but dropped it and looked crestfallen when she threw it at him anyway. "Aw...that was my lucky pillow!" he moaned.

"There's no such thing as a lucky pillow."

"Yes, there is. The Giants won two games in a row since I started sitting on this pillow." Clint picked it up and started fluffing it. "It took me all night to get the stuffing just right..." he whined.

"Stop changing the subject," Natasha insisted, seeing through his subterfuge.

"All right," Clint said, and he looked like he was ready to come clean. "After what happened to Daredevil…the Avengers are getting together with some members of a few of the other hero teams. You know, a big pow-wow to discuss the matter."

"You mean the Zodiac," said Natasha. "Going after them for killing Daredevil."

"Yeah. But this is all preliminary stuff. Just conferencing. No need for you to risk getting sick on the ride there."

"Oh, is that right?" Natasha asked. Though he was trying to avoid sounding condescending, Natasha could still hear it hiding behind his nicely-couched words and she bristled at it.

"Yeah, so you stay here and make sure there's dinner ready when I get home..."

Natasha smiled as she made a fist like she was going to punch him.

Clint put up his hands to block, unsure if he should mock fear or really be afraid. "I meant lunch! I'm sure I'll be back by lunch. Look, forget that. Why don't you just curl up with a good book or something? What's that author you like, Dostoveky?"

"Dostoevsky," she corrected, with a roll of her eyes. "And you're sure you don't need me at this conference? Natasha asked, fixing her gaze back on him. "Not to discount all you big brave heroes, but none of you have the skills, not to mention the intelligence contacts that I do. You and I could hit the streets and-"

"See? I just knew it!" Clint exclaimed. "I just knew you'd get too involved and not want out of this – and you haven't even been to the conference yet! And, yeah, you're only two months pregnant now, but there's no telling how long it will take to bring Zodiac down. I don't care if you think I'm being sexist, or think I'm being an overbearing husband, but I'm putting my purple-booted foot down!"

"So you're going to leave me out of all Avengers business for the next – what? Seven months? Longer?"

"No, just this business."

"I'm not Daredevil."

"We could all be the next Daredevil," Clint said with a grim look of determination on his face.

Natasha un-tensed and shrugged. "Right. Well, okay," Natasha finally agreed. She turned back to the couch and plopped down on it. "I did say I was going to take a bit of step back from the hero game for awhile, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did, and I think it's a good idea in your—"

"Condition. Right." She glanced back at him and gave him a half-smile. "Idiot."

Clint smiled at that. She always called him that instead of saying, "You're right."

"Love you too," Clint said as he grabbed his arquebus, hefted it over his shoulder, and headed for the garage.

Natasha listened for the roar of Hawkeye's motorcycle, but did not get up from the couch for a minute longer. Then she jumped up, ran upstairs, and fetched her own costume and gear. She left them bundled up as she spent about six minutes washing up and brushing her hair. Then she changed into a haltertop blouse, bootcut jeans, and high-heeled boots. Then she headed down into the garage with her bundled costume and gear, where her own motorcycle was parked - a 1969 Triumph Bonneville with a 649-cubic parallel twin engine. She stowed her gear in a storage compartment beneath the seat, opened the garage door back up, and walked the bike outside.

_Sorry darling_, she thought as she donned her helmet, _but you know you didn't marry June Cleaver. Besides, I'm just going to do a little snooping around, see what I can dig up. Shake some trees and turn over a few rocks. Not much danger in that, is there?_

It was a warm, sunny morning that greeted her as Natasha and perfect weather for strolling through TK Park, so that's what Natasha decided to do. She drove around until she found a parking space on TK Street for the Bonneville and paid the meter. Then she noticed the boys again who had been watching the crazy old astrologer. She checked her watch. School would already be in session so they must have been playing hooky today. She had an urge to go scold them, but hesitated as a new, unfamiliar feeling came over her. She was suddenly fearful that her own child might turn out like them. She and Clint were certainly no role models for quiet and orderly lives. What if their son or daughter started skipping school while they were out on Avengers business? Natasha was surprised that her heart was beating faster. She was genuinely concerned!

Now even more curious about the delinquent boys than before, Natasha followed them. The oldest looked to be about 13. He wore his dark hair halfway down to his shoulders, a patchwork denim shirt, and raggedy bellbottoms. She only planned to watch them a moment longer when the oldest boy started watching a woman's purse suspiciously. Because she had not been following them closely, they were half a block away now and on the wrong side of TK from her. Natasha saw an opening and dashed out into traffic, trying to keep an eye on the boys as she dodged cars. After looking away for an instant, she saw the boys scattering in all directions and the woman looking around, purse-less. Natasha trained her eyes on the oldest boy and started after him.

Sure it was just a petty theft, she realized, perhaps not worth her time all things considered, but she was too emotionally invested to ignore it now. Besides, she knew that it was something Daredevil would have taken seriously. Daredevil would have swooped in whether it was a purse snatcher, Stilt Man, or Dr. Doom; and if Clint thought he had to protect her because of what happened to Daredevil, then doing this in his memory was the least she could do.

Natasha started to tear up, feeling surprisingly emotional, but she blinked them away so she could focus on the boy. He had crossed a vacant lot, went over a chain link fence with practiced ease, and then ran across TK Street. Natasha kept a small amount of distance so that when he periodically looked back behind him he could see no one tailing him. The boy clearly hadn't counted today on someone with elite KGB training tailing him. To him, she was practically invisible.

Assuming he had got away clean, the boy soon slowed down to a regular walk, crossed TK, and joined back up with his scattered friends as they reached some older tenements on TK St. Natasha watched them run up the stairs into a five-story tenement. Then she looked around to orient herself. It was a long way back to her bike and her Black Widow costume in the back compartment, but it would be worth it if she could intimidate those kids into giving up the purse or, better yet, scaring them out of a life in crime.

So it was 10 minutes later when the Black Widow rode her Bonneville back to the old tenement building. All the parking spaces were lined with junky cars, but she parked between two of them. To evade a ticket, she slapped an Avengers sticker on her license plate as she looked up, checking the windows for the boys.

It was slow going, climbing around the outside of the building, as she frequently had to switch to a different side when people below started to notice her. It turned out to be especially slow going because she started at the ground and worked her way up. She did not spot the boys until she had worked her way up to the loft on the top floor. It was a spacious loft, apparently converted into a gym, though one long ignored by any cleaners. The boys were all there, plus a few more, making 15 in total. They were either working out or standing around bored. But what really surprised Natasha was that the crazy old astrologer was there too.

The Astrologer was standing at a table covered in wallets, purses – including the one Natasha had seen stolen - and assorted merchandise. The Astrologer was methodically inspecting the contents of one of the wallets. Natasha moved closer to a cracked window and pressed her ear against it to listen to the conversation within.

"Was Jupiter in its zenith?" the Astrologer was asking as he pulled a credit card out of the wallet.

"We spent on it until the owner cut off the card," one of the older boys said. "We almost got caught on that one."

"Were the sun and the moons aligned in Aquarius?" the Astrologer asked.

"No, we said it was our dad's card and they let us go with just a warning."

Natasha's eyes widened as she realized the Astrologer was speaking in a code the kids understood. His ravings on the street had probably not been ravings to them either, but were instructions to their ears only. And to think she had given him a dollar – this Fagin-like crook!

Having heard enough, Natasha climbed up to the roof and forced the roof access door open. The first door off the stairwell led to the loft. She took a running start at it and kicked it in.

All eyes turned on her in the loft. She stood in the doorway, hands on her hips, giving everyone the menacing glare she had used on Clint earlier that day. "Black Widow, Avengers business," she said tersely. "I have reason to believe there is stolen property on the premises. I'm taking the Astrologer into my custody and anyone else here who's with him."

"Libra is blind, subordinate to Taurus!" the Astrologer shouted.

"Don't worry, we won't let her take anybody!" the 13-year old said. "She's just a girl!" he told the others. "Stop her!"

"Okay, Sammy!" responded some of the 11- and 12-year old boys. Emboldened, they picked up weights from the floor and swung them menacingly. One boy even produced a switchblade. Not a one of them showed any combat skills, though. They were trying to intimidate her with numbers and drive her back through the door. She countered and surprised them by charging right into their midst. She disarmed them one at a time with simple chops while easily dodging the few blows that even came close. She tried to keep an eye on the Astrologer, but after he handed something to the oldest boy, Sammy, it looked like he was sneaking away to look for a place to hide.

In a minute, the kids were, either, lying on the floor prone, clutching their wrists in pain, or backing away in fear – except for the oldest boy, Sammy. Sammy clicked the hammer back on the .38 Smith & Wesson he held in both trembling hands. He was standing about seven feet from her, she judged.

"Sammy, put the gun down," she said calmly.

"Afraid I'll shoot?" Sammy said, aiming as steady as he could.

"I can take you down from here, Sammy, but not without seriously injuring you. Just let me step a little closer and I can disarm you without either of us getting hurt." She took a step forward.

"Don't!" Sammy said, his hands getting shakier. "I mean it!"

By now, though, Natasha was four feet from him. Far faster than Sammy could react, she lunged to the left, grabbed his gun, twisted his hand around, and made him drop the gun. She kicked it across the room into the corner and bent Sammy's arm back until he went down on the ground. It would smart, but it would hopefully teach him a lesson about pointing guns.

It was over in a second, but by the time she was ready to deal with the Astrologer, there was no sign of him. Luckily, the exit was really obvious, as the door to the loft was still swung open. As she listened, she even heard the echo of the metal rail in the stairwell shaking. Ignoring the kids, the Black Widow went after the real criminal.

From the racket in the stairwell, it was clear exactly how far down to the ground floor the Astrologer had made it so far. It was a stairwell that was open down the center, which was going to make catching him much easier. The Black Widow pulled at a reel of wire concealed in her right bracelet and wrapped the end of it around the banister several times. Then she dove right over the edge of the rail, hurtling unafraid down two floors of empty space, before swinging the line so she could swing onto the second floor landing and smashing right into the Astrologer. The Astrologer took a nasty bang against the outside wall of the stairwell and fell onto the steps leading down to the ground floor. She had expected he would have a concealed weapon on him that she would knock loose and felt a twinge of guilt for hitting him so hard when he turned out to be empty handed.

"The sun is in Gemini, reflected in her red hair!" the Astrologer raved as he struggled to his feet. "If Pisces had held the key, all might have gone well in the Ankh."

The Black Widow grabbed him and hoisted him to his feet. She was about to say something else, but hesitated as realization began to dawn on her. "What did you just say?" she demanded.

"If Pisces had held the key, all might have gone well in the Ankh."

"The…Zodiac Key?" the Black Widow asked.

"Yes! Yes! The Zodiac Key!" the Astrologer shouted excitedly.

The Black Widow leaned out into the stairwell shaft and looked up and down, worried now that this was a trap. Nothing happened. She still kept her grip on the Astrologer by the shirt and yanked him back against the wall. "You work for Zodiac?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"I know the Zodiac. I am an astrologer, after all," the Astrologer said with surprising cogency.

"Right…" the Black Widow said. She bit her lip as her mind raced to consider the possibilities. The general public knew little about the Zodiac cartel and nothing about their weapon, the Zodiac Key, or the Ankh Dimension. And other ravings of his made sense now too. She thought he was talking about her as Gemini at first, but she also remembered that Gemini in the cartel was also a redhead. And Libra being blind? As hard as it was to believe, the perfect informant on the Zodiac may have just fallen into her lap!

NEXT ISH: Can the Black Widow make use of what she's learned? Not if Zodiac gets to her first! Be here next time for "What's Going On!"


	3. Chapter 3

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring Black Widow #3

by Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot  
"What's Going On"

July 20, 1971. 12:45 pm

Natasha had expected the call, which was why she brought the cellular phone along. These new phones worked by having calls bounced to them from a satellite, so she could get the phone call anywhere within range of the satellite. She knew Clint would call it when she did not answer at home. She just did not expect the call this soon. He was starting to check in on her more frequently, apparently.

"Hello?" Natasha said after picking up the call.

"Hey babe!" Clint said from the other end. "How come you didn't pick up the house phone? Is everything okay?"

"Oh, everything is fine here! I just went out to buy a few things. How's work?"

"We're heading to the Arctic. We think those Kree soldiers are forming a beachhead there or something. Are you okay with—I mean, we could use you at the mansion, to check on things while we're up there."

Natasha smiled. Clint was so careful now about not making her feel left out. "Okay, honey, I'll stop by there later. I'm in a store, so I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Okay. Love ya, babe!"

"Love you!" Natasha shut off the phone, which was much smaller than the long, bulky, box-like phones most people with cellular phones had, and hung it from her belt. She saw that Carl was awake now and inching towards his gun. She stomped her heel on his arm and he let out a howl. Thankfully Clint had already hung up and did not hear that.

July 19, 1971. 1:11 pm. Yesterday.  
Betheda Terrace, Central Park.

The Astrologer looked like a bum on a park bench, idling throwing bread to ducks. He certainly did not look like the sort of man a good-looking woman would walk up to and sit down next to. Other men in the park glanced over, a bit enviously, at the slim, shapely woman in a short-sleeve blouse, jeans, and dark glasses. Her old black-haired wig completed Natasha's disguise.

"Nice day, Astrologer," Natasha said. She still had not got a real name out of him, but it seemed unimportant. He seemed to like answering to this.

"Cancers will like today," the Astrologer said as he tossed the last of his bread crumbs. "The moon has been strong for them since the last equinox."

Natasha was still learning how to interpret the Astrologer. Everything that sounded like astrological babble had a deeper meaning. Whether he understood it or not himself, she was still unsure. She was also unsure of how his predictions had so much knowledge of the Zodiac cartel's inner workings, but she was certainly willing to use that to her advantage. She knew enough about the Zodiac cartel to know that Cancer was in charge at this time. "How strong?" she asked. "Strong enough that they might have a big plan underway?"

The Astrologer shrugged. "No, not a time for action. Cancer is still introverted. But it is a time for gathering other houses to them."

Natasha knit her eyebrows while she struggled to find meaning. "Other houses…including rivals? Rival houses?"

"Yes!" the Astrologer said, his hands becoming more animated as he talked excitedly. "Their dignity waxes past the usual exaltations and Mars is in an especially deep fall, especially under the moon's influence."

"So, if Mars were the Maffia…" Natasha said, remembering how that connection had led to a particular success in the Meatpacking District just days ago, "then Zodiac is still moving in on Maffia territory, clandestinely, under cover of darkness." At night, when I can't sneak out to catch them because Clint would be home and wouldn't let me, Natasha thought to herself bitterly. "Are they looking to absorb the Maffia, I mean, Mars?"

"No, not absorb!" the Astrologer scolded, like he was explaining something to a child. "If Mars was not there, there could be no alignment! What will come from Mars will come from within."

"Ah…" Natasha said as she did her own absorbing. "Zodiac doesn't want all of the Maffia, they just want…the middle management? The lieutenants? And leave the rest as a hollow threat to distract us from Zodiac?" Natasha thought some more about how to word her next question. "So, if I were looking for the best place to catch Cancer putting Mars into a deeper fall, but during the day – outside the moon's influence – where would I go?"

"Donnadio's Restaurant," the Astrologer said as if it was a simple question and answer.

July 20, 1971. 12:46 pm - One minute later.  
The back room of Donnadio's Restaurant, in the Bowery.

"Now, Carl, where were we?" she asked. She kicked his gun farther away and put her hands on her hips. "Before you lost consciousness, I think you were going to tell me how to find Zodiac?"

"I don't know what you're talking—"

"Sure you do, Carl!" Natasha said, picking him up by the arm she had stomped on. He groaned at the additional pain. "You may not look like much right now, but I understand Zodiac is courting you from the Maffia. Very impressive! I bet you know a lot too…like where I can find Zodiac…?"

"I couldn't tell you anything if I wanted to," Carl said, pulling himself up to a sitting position. With his good arm he straightened his tie and tried to look in control. He did not bother to look at the three Maffia goons all lying on the floor unconscious around him. "After what you did to us in the Meatpacking District last week, everyone's being warned not to talk to you. If I was to leak you anything, my life wouldn't be worth a plug nickel."

"Very cliché, Carl. Here's another one. You tell me what I want to know, or I spread the rumor around that you're my informant."

Carl looked frantic. "Hey, you're not playin' fair! He said. "Can't ya just web me up like Spider-Man or something?"

"Do I look like Spider-Man?" Natasha asked, looking as serious as she could.

Carl took one look up and down her tight-fitting bodysuit and gulped.

Two minutes later.

Natasha walked out of Donnadio's by the front door and down the street to where she had left her Bonneville Triumph parked. This was her third time busting up Zodiac recruitment drives and this one was her deepest in Maffia territory. Now she had some more names and locations to work with and was eager to press on, but knew she could not today. A few months ago she would have, but a few months ago she was not pregnant. Clint and the other Avengers would have told her not to do it, but for her that was the whole problem. She would prove to them that she was just as capable as ever, but she would show them the proof only after she had single-handedly crippled the Zodiac cartel. Well, single-handedly, with the Astrologer's tips. Natasha sighed. Maybe it was just a nice fantasy. She could only do so much during the daytime while Clint was out and if she snuck out at night he would know what she was doing for sure. She rode home with the bitter knowledge that Clint wasn't as dumb as he acted and would figure out what she was doing sooner or later and insist she stop. She also resented that her body was craving chocolate. Ironically, she had skipped lunch while staking out a restaurant and she felt like she was starving.

About 30 minutes later, she had stopped in her driveway to open the garage door when she noticed her phone was ringing again.

"Hey babe," Clint said on the other end when she picked up. "There's a whole platoon of Kree soldiers up here. Looks like I might miss dinner tonight. Gotta run. Love ya!"

Natasha was not worried. She knew the Avengers would handle whatever that was about. But she did realize that this left her plenty of time to look into her new leads before Clint came home. She smiled and decided she could spare time to make something to eat before she headed out on the road again.

The door from the garage led into the foyer that despite the carpet and wallpaper having been replaced, still basically looked like the foyer of the KGB substation the townhouse had secretly been only a few short years ago. Manhattan real-estate was difficult, not to mention very expensive to obtain, but thanks to special circumstances, and the assistance of her old comrade Ivan Petrovich, Clint and her had been able to pick the house up as a steal. The bulletproof glassed in post at the garage entrance that arrivals would have to slide their identification under to be examined by a guard on duty, had been transformed into the Barton laundry room; the nearby reinforced metal door remained looking like a bank vault's rather than something that merely led to a kitchenette. Natasha pushed it open and walked in, setting her bike helmet on the table before she went to the fridge.

She was just getting out some bread to make a sandwich to go with her chocolate bars, when she smelled a trace of tobacco in the air. She frowned, wondering a moment if it was coming off her own clothes since she'd just been in a restaurant, but no, it was rather in the air in the house. Faint, although still noticeable to her honed olfactory senses. It didn't smell like one of the stogies Clint sometimes smoked along with Ben Grimm at the latter's famous poker games, and even if it did, she knew Clint wasn't home to have lit one up, so she was suspicious of where the odor could be coming from.

She went into the dining room in search of the offending source and, not finding one - or an open window the smoke might have blew in from – she walked into the adjoining living room. It was out of her peripheral vision that she then saw a man in a costume, hugging the wall, a pistol in his hand. Before he could get the drop on her, she instantly swung out her hand and chopped him in the throat. Another identical looking man, who had been laying in wait on the opposite side, brought his gun to bear on her- seemingly aiming it at the back of her head - but glimpsing his reflection in a glass lamp on a nearby coffee table, she whirled and kicked the gun out his grasp.

"You two sure picked the wrong house to burglarize," Natasha observed as she effortlessly blocked the punch the second man threw and let him have one of her own in return that connected solidly with his jaw.

As he fell back into a potted plant, she retrieved his dropped Beretta pistol, one that she saw was modified to fire tranquilizer darts.

She didn't have a second more to contemplate this. Three other men, similarly garbed and armed, rushed into the living room. Tranq darts shot over her as she ducked into a quick forward roll. Coming out of it still with the pistol in her hand, she fired a return volley of darts. To her dismay she saw her darts bounce harmlessly off the light armor they were wearing.

The man whose pistol she'd taken lunged at her again. She sidestepped him and in the same movement gave his weapon back, smashing it into the side of his head. Though he wore a sort of helmet, the blow was hard enough to leave him senseless. Delivering a powerful kick to propel the man between her and his oncoming fellows, she retreated then into the dining room, and then back around into the kitchen.

She started down the hall toward the garage when the door flew open that she'd not bothered to lock and at least five more goons appeared. They too were clad in the same padded armor, helmet and goggles, and armed with tranq guns.

But she had something even better.

Natasha extended her hand and with a practiced motion tapped the small trigger in her glove. In response an electrical discharge shot out and struck the first of them in the chest. The miniaturized weapon that was first devised by the KGB fit perfectly into her glove and left gold bracelet. In recent years it had been enhanced by Tony Stark so that she could fire up to a hundred highly charged blasts before its power cells started to deplete.

Her eyes widened though to see the man shrug off her widow's sting like it was nothing, their armor not just bulletproof but seeming to be electrically insulated as well. Whoever they were it was clear they had come well prepared for her.

The specially outfitted goon brought his pistol up and unleashed a multi-round burst of darts, what were more than capable of penetrating her costume. Natasha hurriedly threw herself out of their way. Turning, she could hear in the dining room the first group coming up behind her. In seconds she would be trapped, and no matter how good she was there was no way she could defeat all of them hand-to-hand in such close quarters at the same time dodging all their rapidly fired darts.

Before they all reached the kitchen, Natasha moved fast. While she could fit through the small window over the sink, she doubted she could get through it in time. But her quick mind had discerned another escape route. She went to the corner wall and pulled open a wooden hatch that led into an old dumbwaiter. It was something left over from the townhouse's early days that she and Clint only made infrequent use of. Climbing in, she crouched down on the oversized lift and knocked over some dirty dishes Clint must have sent down some time ago to be washed and forgot. _Idiot_, she thought with a smile as she slammed the hatch shut, after triggering the lift to take her upstairs.

The goons all came to a sudden stop in the kitchen, momentarily confused by her little disappearing act. But momentarily being the operative word. As she progressed up the shaft, she heard them below her investigating the hatch. It would be merely another moment or two until they realized where she was, or rather where she was going to be.

As soon as the lift reached the top floor she leapt out, just as the first of them were running up the steps. The goon aimed his gun and fired. She ducked the darts, ran, rolled, and came up, kicking him in the chest. Sending him further off-balance with an elbow strike to the goggled face, she grabbed underneath his armored vest and quickly flipped him down the staircase. The goon nearly broke his neck as he crashed into his fellows, who were knocked off their feet like bowling pins.

In that instant she was closing the distance to the master bedroom. She ran into the walk-in closet and ripped open the secret panel in which Clint stowed his various bows and arrows. She grabbed his special always-strung bow and notched a trick arrow whose function she recognized.

A few lessons from Hawkeye were enough to allow her to successfully shoot the arrow to the end of the hall by the stairs. The attached smoke grenade detonated a thick cloud of dark smoke, casting the floor above in darkness and triggering the fire alarm. The disoriented men moved forward through the smoke hesitantly, unable to see more than a few feet in front of them as they coughed, and struggled to breathe. Natasha fired another arrow into the smoke that pinned one man's leg to the floor with a glob of putty, and then holding her breath, she ran forward and waded into the black cloud to take advantage of its cover.

Her fists and feet lashed out in a series of blows that incapacitated four more of them. The temporary smokescreen soon dissipated though enough for the goons down the stairs to start taking shots at her. She turned back to the master bedroom to try to make use of some more trick arrows, but from the same direction yet another goon was racing up the adjoining hallway toward her, his dart gun blasting away. One dart nearly caught her in the neck.

With nowhere else left to run, Natasha sprinted into the upstairs den – and stopped short as she saw a man just sitting in the chair there. Recognition barely registered before Natasha tried to blind him quickly with a "widow's sting". The electric arc was interrupted halfway to its target. Her first thought was that it was a forcefield, but then she spotted the edges of the glass shield sitting in front of him. Much lower tech, but in this instance just as effective.

He was a heavy-set man, but it was barely observable in his well-tailored brown suit. He sat nonchalantly with one leg crossed over the other. What made him stand out was that his face was concealed behind a large, crude gold mask fashioned like some primitive icon of a bull's face, replete with horns.

"Taurus," Natasha said, identifying the man by the Zodiac symbolism of his mask. She would have loved to tear that mask off his face and see who was beneath it. "What's going on?" she demanded.

"At ease, men!" Taurus called out from behind the full-face mask. "That is, if Mrs. Barton here would like to take a short break from her exercise?" He gestured to the spare seat in the den.

"I'll stand," Natasha said, stepping into the room and leaning against the wall so no one could come up behind her. She was determined not to let it show how it annoyed her when he called her by her real name. Instead, she countered with, "and you have permission to do this? I understand how Zodiac operates. At this time of year, Cancer is in charge of the organization, not you."

Taurus uncrossed his legs and stood up. "Make no mistake – no matter what the bylaws of Zodiac are, it is and always will be my organization. It was my fortune that founded it. My leadership that made it what it is," he said, wagging an angry finger at her.

"Aren't you breaking the unwritten rule of supervillainy, that you don't come after us in our civilian lives and we don't track your every movement?

Taurus straightened his suit. "But you have, haven't you?" he said. "Two disruptions of our operations, three ambushes of our operatives, and now an assault on a raw recruit - six surgically precise attacks in one month."

"I have my sources. Sources are still fair game, aren't they?"

"They would be if they weren't psychic," Taurus said, sitting back down. "The Astrologer? You see, you erred in allowing him to continue his ravings on street corners. We picked him up earlier today."

"So what happens next?" Natasha said, shifting her weight to her right hip. "I push over that glass screen, take you prisoner, and make you tell your men to surrender?"

"If you make a move against me, my men behind you out in the hall know to open fire – this time with real bullets and not with tranquilizer darts. And this screen may be portable, but it is also bulletproof. Why up the stakes any higher? Especially with your precious cargo?"

"I can't believe even Zodiac would stoop so low as to kill a pregnant mother," Natasha said, scowling.

"I'm sure you've dealt with plenty of ruthless men before. But let's not lose our cool. I obviously don't want you dead or you would be already."

"Is that what you told Daredevil?"

"Oh, please. That was not our fault. We wanted to hold Daredevil as bait for a trap for you Avengers. Unfortunately, we contracted a criminal called the Exterminator to catch him, unaware of how badly he wanted Daredevil dead. The Exterminator grossly disobeyed his orders and I give you my word he paid for it as fatally as Daredevil did."

"So this is take two? You capture me and use me as bait?"

"Not quite. The game's already been altered by you and the Astrologer. We don't know what all he's gleaned of our organization and told you, but in our worse-case scenario you've already told enough to the Avengers that they will be heading for our secret headquarters any time now. So we don't need bait; we need leverage."

"A hostage."

"Precisely. I assure you, I took command of this operation personally so that no one with a serious grudge against you would be in the position of capturing you. I personally don't hold anything against you. Your organization against mine – it's all just business to me. So, your options are that you surrender to us and no one – especially your baby – gets hurt, or you fight your way out of this room and take what risks are waiting for you."

Natasha glanced at the window.

"There are even more men out back waiting for you if you want to try that route," Taurus interjected.

There was a long pause while Natasha weighed her options. She was still confident that she could take down this guy and all his remaining flunkies. But if she took a bullet, or even one good punch to the stomach...

"I surrender," Natasha said.

_Next Ish': How good a hostage does the Black Widow make? Ask Watchlord! It's called "Knock Three Times" and it's coming in just 4 more weeks!_


	4. Chapter 4

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring Black Widow #4

by Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot  
"Knock Three Times"

August 7, 1971.

"What one do you want to hear again?" Watchlord asked.

"The one about the Eel," Natasha said.

"Okay." Watchlord got comfortable for the telling. "So, the Eel is working with Mr. Fear and Ox, right? And they've got this plan to lure Daredevil into this trap. Only, they have no idea when he will show up. It could literally be hours. And the only place they can hide while they wait is the closet."

"The closet," Natasha said with a laugh.

"Right, so the three of them are just standing there in the closet, for hours, waiting for Daredevil to show up. Ox is this huge guy and Mr. Fear has the big cape-thing going on, so it's really packed in this closet. So, after an hour or so, the Eel starts opening up to these guys, just to kill the time. He's talking about how he designed the slippery coating on his costume, but then he starts talking about how he wants superheroes to try and grapple him. By the time he asks the others if they like being grappled by superheroes, Mr. Fear has figured out where this is heading and is desperately trying to change the subject. Ox doesn't get it for the longest time, but when he does, he goes, 'Oh my God!' and tries to get out of the closet."

Natasha laughed. It helped that Watchlord never took off his helmet and gaudy costume, which made it even funnier when he got up and acted like Ox. Natasha had long since stopped wearing her costume and was in cozy pajamas. They were her pajamas, as Zodiac had been nice enough to pack up some of her things when they abducted her.

"So, Mr. Fear has to calm Ox down," Watchlord continued, "and the Eel finally figures out he's in a closet with two straight guys. It had actually never occurred to him that any costumed villains were straight!"

"Did you ever fight Daredevil?" Natasha asked, suddenly serious.

"No, I never fought any superheroes at all! If you try to escape, you'll be my first. No, the costume is just how you build a rep for yourself in this business. If you don't have a good costume, you're just a goon. A flunkie."

"Is 'jailor' so much better?" Natasha asked.

"Hey, Zodiac is a great organization to belong to. It's a growing cartel with a lot of room for advancement. The benefits are pretty good too. You're not doing too bad as a prisoner yourself."

Natasha had to admit to herself that part was true. The apartment was the proverbial gilded cage. The console table with its cherry finish and turned spindle legs, the leather-covered couch with its hardwood frame, the Juliette mirror with antiqued gold frame – Natasha wished she could take the furniture with her when she escaped. The smaller items she could have used as a weapon were bolted to the floor or walls, while the larger furniture, which Watchlord could presumably move with his telekinesis, was free to move. The kitchen was fully stocked and Watchlord happened to be an excellent cook. Maybe that was another of his mutant powers besides telekinesis and never needing to sleep.

Watchlord changed the subject to something safer. "More chocolate-covered popcorn?"

"Please," said Natasha with a smile, holding out her empty bowl for him.

Watchlord unlocked the door to the kitchen – kept locked up because of all the obvious weapons Natasha could find inside one. As he disappeared into the kitchen, she sat back and looked down at herself. She had put on more than a few pounds in the last couple of weeks. It was natural, and so were her cravings, though what she really wanted more than anything else was her husband…

Where was Clint anyway? He should have been able to track her down long by now. With all the resources the Avengers had at their disposal she expected it would be a few days at most until he would be able to recover her. Knowing it would take him this long she might not have surrendered herself so easily. What was the hold up? When she thought about it, she lapsed back and forth between anger and worry. Surely Zodiac had not defeated them. Watchlord received regular calls on the phone that could not make outgoing calls. Natasha had listened in as best she could on every one of them. Usually Watchlord was just checking in, but something he went "uh-huh" a lot, as if being given further instructions or some news. If it was news, Watchlord usually told her. Yesterday it was letting her know that Apollo 15 was coming home from its four-day moon mission. And if it had been a public defeat, she would have known from the Friday edition of the Daily Bugle she was allowed to read each week.

All this time Natasha had been, not only cooperating with her jailor, but building a friendly rapport to test Watchlord and make him, gradually, let down his guard. The early tests were to make sure that Watchlord was not a telepath. He never claimed to be, but Natasha had been initially concerned he might have more than one psychic power after Watchlord gave her a demonstration of his telekinesis by levitating the couch. In all this time, though, he had never betrayed any knowledge of the little deceits she snuck past him, like the single sheet she had managed to sneak out of two separate newspapers and hide under the couch cushions. As long as he was not very good at deceiving her, he was not reading her mind. Now that she was confident of that, she was fairly confident she could take him down so long as she had complete surprise – knock him unconscious before he could begin to turn his telekinetic powers on her. The problem she faced, however, was what to do once she had dealt with him.

While her prison looked like a normal apartment building - that was merely the outer façade. On the inside were reinforced walls and extra-thick bulletproof windows with electronic locks on each floor that required codes and retina scans – the latter being technology she was surprised to see even Zodiac had - to bypass. When Natasha was brought in, Taurus had her blindfold removed once they were inside so she could see just how formidable the security was and to discourage her trying to break out. She had some knowledge of the layout of the building, but not where the building was or even where the entrance was as she had been given a shot of something to make her woozy on the way to her prison.

Worst of all, Natasha knew if she did try to bust out she could not afford to fail, as she would only get that one chance. It would have to be perfectly planned so there was no risk of injury. She owed her baby that. And if she failed, she would have erased all the good will she had with Watchlord. Indeed, it seemed to her that her best bet of escape was getting Watchlord to help her do it.

"Here you go," he said as he returned with a bowl of the freshly made popcorn treat. "Be careful, it's still a little hot."

Natasha ate one and then winced as she slightly burned her tongue. "You're right, but not as hot as things are going to get around here."

"Oh?"

She set the bowl aside in order to let it cool and looked at Watchlord pointedly. "How do you think this is going to end?"

"Um…" the costumed man faltered. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean - when the Avengers come for me." Natasha gestured expansively around the room. "When they do they're going to crack this building open like a walnut, and everyone in here is going to be arrested." She met his eyes with warmth, and seriousness. "Now, I promise you when that happens I'm going to tell them - as well as the judge at your hearing - about how you tried to help me. On the word of an Avenger I think I can assure that you'll get a much lighter sentence than the rest will. Maybe only five or ten years at most…"

"Five or ten years, huh?" Watchlord said with mild alarm.

"As you mentioned, the Zodiac is a growing criminal enterprise, growing all the more immense and threatening by the day."

"And do you want to know why?" he counted. "Because not only are our leaders geniuses, but your Avenger friends and the rest of the hero community have been getting a little too big for your britches lately and spreading yourselves out way too thin. Watchlord began counting off on his fingers as he recounted some recent events that were common knowledge. "The Fantastic Four building an international space program to replace NASA. The Avengers settling international disputes and involving themselves in arms limitation talks with the Soviets.* Iron Man in Sudan playing peacekeeper."

_* (see AA 70's Black Widow #1)_

"What's your point?" Natasha asked him, though she had a good idea where he was going with this.

"My point is that most of you costumed heroes have given up on dealing with street crime and those that haven't are all outmatched."

Natasha cringed a little to think of how Daredevil was one of them and sighed. "I'll grant you the Avengers are busier than they used to be, but the Zodiac are in their sights, especially after them kidnapping me. I was just doing some of the initial groundwork for them. But if you don't think they're going to be here sooner or later you're fooling yourself. Now, I'm offering you a deal. If you help me escape I could probably arrange for most of the charges against you to be dropped."

"Free, but with a mark on my head the size of Yankee stadium." He shook his head. "Sorry, Natasha, but the Zodiac is where I want to be. Before them I was nothing. Now I'm the Watchlord. In another year Zodiac might even give me my own city to run, like Philadelphia, or San Francisco."

"I'm afraid it's going to be a room in Attica or Riker's for you," she told him, shaking her own head sadly. "Have you ever noticed that supercriminals tend to turn on the people under them instead of rewarding them?"

"It won't happen to me. Look," Watchlord said with what sounded like earnest sympathy. "I wish I could help you, I really do. But-"

The phone rang, cutting him off in mid-sentence. Watchlord reached out with his hand and the receiver flew off and came to him. "Yeah?" he asked with uncharacteristic rudeness.

Natasha could hear the gunfire and the explosion on the phone from where she was sitting. She stood up.

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh," Watchlord was saying. When Natasha moved towards him, Watchlord stretched out his hand and telekinetically pushed her back. This was serious, she knew, for he had not once used his powers on her all this time.

"It's the Avengers, isn't it?" Natasha asked.

"Be quiet. Sit on the couch," Watchlord said as he hung up the phone and ran to the door to the apartment. He listened at it.

"They'll be here any second, won't they?"

"Be quiet!" Watchlord yelled, completely losing his cool. "It's not all the Avengers," he said when he regained his composure. "It's just Hawkeye."

Natasha's heart skipped a beat. She had been waiting all these weeks for Clint to show up, but now that he had, she was terribly worried for his safety. "Watchlord…" she said in a pleading voice, wishing she knew his real name to appeal to, "we've been like friends these past few weeks. Surely you wouldn't allow harm to happen to my husband…"

"I told you to shut up!" Watchlord said as he turned on her and gestured with both hands. Natasha was pushed back into the couch and the couch toppled over.

There was another explosion – this time on the same floor and clearly audible through the door. Watchlord tensed by the door, apparently ready to ambush Clint.

Behind the turned over couch, Natasha fished the two sheets of newspaper out from under the cushions. She was out of time and out of weapons, except this one desperate move. She folded the paper hurriedly, not even looking up when she heard Clint's voice out in the hallway.

"'Tasha!" Clint called out. "Which door is yours?"

Watchlord turned around when he noticed Natasha did not answer as he expected her to. Indeed, there was no sign of her in the room. He took a step away from the door to peer over the tipped-over couch and, in that moment, felt the improvised garrote of folded paper cross the front of his neck.

"Think I've put on so much weight I don't know how to sneak up on someone?" she asked with an angry growl, letting her long frustration with captivity vent. "Hawkeye! In here!" she screamed.

Watchlord used his telekinesis to try to push Natasha off of him, but the garrote held and her grip held – Watchlord literally pulled himself off his own feet and the two of them fell backwards into the console table and knocked it over.

Outside the door was the clap of gunfire and the door imploded in a shower of pieces. Clint, dressed as Hawkeye and holding his smoking arquebus, proceeded into the room and quickly appraised the situation. His solution to the situation was to charge the helmeted man grappling his wife and swing the butt of his seemingly antique rifle down at the helmeted man's head. Although Clint was not within line of sight, apparently Watchlord was able to bring some of his telekinesis to bear and made what should have been a solid strike a glancing blow. Or perhaps Watchlord was just too distracted tearing the garrote from his throat so he could safely shove Natasha away.

"Stupid move, bringing that old gun," Watchlord said when his throat was clear to speak. "I'm not giving you time to reload."

"I don't need to reload to take you down," Clint said, reaching into his gunpowder bag.

"No, don't!" Natasha warned, but it was too late. Throwing gunpowder into people's faces to blind them was a trick Clint had been using for awhile now, but Watchlord telekinetically snagged the cloud of gunpowder and redirected it back into Clint's face. So they would not lose whatever advantage they had, Natasha had to risk more direct confrontation and delivered a vicious kick and a neck strike to Watchlord in quick succession. Though Watchlord went down on one knee, his power meant he did not need much mobility to fight back. Perhaps because of their friendship, Watchlord again refrained from using lethal force on Natasha, but only flipped her around in the air and sent her tumbling away.

By the time Watchlord swung around to deal with Clint again, Clint could see out of one eye again and was swinging the barrel of the gun like a baseball bat towards Watchlord's midsection. It was a solid hit this time, too quick for Watchlord to block. Clint then followed up quickly with a left jab to the face and, after switching hands on the arquebus, a right hook to the side of the head that knocked Watchlord down.

"So," Clint said to Natasha, "do you want to go or stick around here a while longer?"

Natasha was already back on her feet and had planned to use the now-open door to exit, but Clint's words made pent up anger burst out. "What was that supposed to mean?" she asked, staying right where she was.

"Forget it, let's just go," Clint said, coming towards her.

Natasha, still angry, backed away. "No, what did that mean? Do you think I wanted to be here this long?"

"Well, it's not like you've been hurting for comforts. And you've had helmet-head here for company. I hope nothing was going on—"

"You jealous jerk!" Natasha yelled, slapping Clint. "Watchlord never tried anything! He happens to be homosexual."

"He's a what?" Clint asked, surprised, but the conversation was interrupted by Watchlord's recovery and the couch flying across the room between the married couple. The couch struck the wall with enough force to break in half.

"And what's your excuse?" Natasha asked as the room filled up with flying furniture that they both had to dodge. "Why are you so late coming to get me? Just thought you needed a vacation from me?"

"It's not like that! Ow!" Clint protested as a lamp caught him in the shoulder. "You don't know what's been going on out there! No one does! The Kree are coming in full-force! Some of their ships are already here!"

"And these aliens left Apollo 15 alone?" Watchlord interjected incredulously.

"Not that anyone asked you, but Apollo 15 only landed safely because we asked Thor to guard it. We've been fighting their advanced scouts round the clock, but their armada is coming!"

"There's something else coming," Watchlord said. "I haven't even begun to show you the extent of my power yet!" The inside wall of the living room began to crack and tear. Then the whole wall suddenly broke apart into huge chunks. "I'll bury you both!" Watchlord roared over the noise of the wall tearing apart.

Apparently expecting them to run or cower, Watchlord was completely unprepared for the running kick to the stomach Natasha gave him. He stumbled backward, lost his concentration, and fell to the ground as sections of wall fell on his head. Without pausing, Natasha spun back around on Clint and said, "If you're so busy, then why come get me now?"

"Because…" Clint said as he came right up to her and looked into her eyes. "If the end is coming, I want you and our baby with me."

"Oh, Clint…" Natasha said as the anger melted out of her. "I love you, you big idiot."

They turned to go, only to see that Watchlord was still on the ground, but watching them. "Well, what are you two waiting for?" Watchlord asked with a playful grin. "The surveillance devices that were embedded in the wall are probably broken now. You should get out of here while I'm knocked out!"

"What about the Astrologer?" Natasha asked. "Is he a prisoner here too?"

"What, you mean this guy? He called out to me on the floor before this one." Clint was pointing to the now visible hallway beyond the collapsed wall where a familiar, scraggly old man was peeking from around a corner.

"The parallel cycles are converged. Are the two constellations now one?" the Astrologer asked and, for once, everyone had an idea as to what he meant.

_Next Ish': The end isn't here yet! Natasha has time first for a very important dinner date. Be here next time for "My Dinner with Gwen."_


	5. Chapter 5

My Dinner with Gwen

September 9, 1971.

New York City.

It was an attractive pair of women who were seated at the rear corner table of Jean-Pierre's Restaurant. One was a redhead, in her 30s, wearing a loose blouse, vest, and slacks. The other was a blond in her 20s, her hair pulled back by a clip, wearing a tight red and black turtleneck with slacks. The potted plant behind the redhead was a Boston Fern. The tablecloth was fine linen. The silverware was polished to a high gleam. The menus were written in both French and English. The wine list had been turned away, the two women choosing to drink water only.

Natasha Barton ordered coq au vin and pointed to a few other things on the menu. The waiter walked away, leaving Natasha and Gwen Parker alone.

"I've been waiting to tell you that you look fantastic," Gwen said, her hands animated and her speech enthusiastic. She smiled when she spoke. Natasha had never seen Gwen not smile.

"No. No, I'm not," Natasha said before sipping some water.

"Yes you are! You are glowing!"

"No - but you! Look at you!" Natasha redirected. "You look great. All your baby fat gone in two months?"

Gwen looked down at herself, embarrassed. "Not quite all gone, but I sure look a lot better than I did. When I was five months pregnant, I looked so terrible I wouldn't go outside and you don't look like that at all."

"You did not look terrible. I haven't been gone that long that I forgot what you looked like, though it does seem like forever since we've had a chance to sit down and talk like this."

The waiter returned with a plate of appetizers. Gwen wrinkled up her nose and gave Natasha a funny look after seeing the snails on the plate.

"You said you weren't going to make me try escargots," Gwen said.

"Russian spies are notorious liars," Natasha said, teasing Gwen with a hint of her old accent. "You don't have to try them if you don't want to, but I wanted some. I was craving escargots last night. Clint said I was crazy."

"So you talked me into coming to lunch with you instead," Gwen said with a half-smile. "Sneaky."

"It's not like that," Natasha said as she slurped down the contents of a shell. "Wasn't it January when we last talked about having lunch?"

"I do remember that," Gwen conceded, sipping her water. "Right before you got whisked away to Arkon's dimension, wasn't it?"

"Well...I won't be doing any whisking for awhile now," Natasha said glumly.

"Before you know it, you'll be whisking just like- oh no," Gwen said, losing her bubbly cheerful personality so fast that it surprised Natasha.

"What's wrong?" Natasha asked, sitting up and tensing.

"Don't look, but Norman Osborn just came in," Gwen said quietly, leaning her face into her propped up hand to conceal it.

"What, the businessman, Norman Osborn?" Natasha asked, confused.

"No, the father of my best friend Norman Osborn," Gwen said, then dropped her voice to a whisper, "and the man who hit on me."

"No."

"Yes!" Gwen said, still whispering. "When Peter and I were in London last year, Norman tried to get me to – you know – with him."

"Oh!" Natasha said, suddenly filled with anger. She turned around and glared at Norman Osborn, being seated across the room at a table with some other people who were probably business partners of his. "Oh, that's disgusting! He must be stupid. Does Peter know?"

"No, I haven't told him. When your boyfriend is strong enough to rip somebody's head off, you try not to get him too mad."

"Well, I would if I was that strong too. I mean, only the biggest idiot in the world would think you would...you know, with your best friend's dad."

"I know! I didn't think anyone in the world was crazy enough to think I would do something like that."

While Natasha glared icy daggers, the oblivious Norman stood up, excused himself from his friends, and headed off towards the restrooms.

"Excuse me, Gwen," Natasha said, rising from her seat. "I'm going to the ladies' room."

"Natasha, don't-"

Natasha paused and looked back. If Gwen asked her to sit down, she would.

"-be gone too long," Gwen said, picking up her water glass again and trying to look innocent.

Natasha zigzagged around tables, trying to reach the restrooms right behind Norman. Norman Osborn was wearing an expensive suit, his wavy brown hair immaculately groomed. To all outward appearances, he was a classy man. That just seemed to make it worse. As Norman opened the door to the men's room, Natasha followed him in before the door closed. He noticed her right away as she closed the door because she had allowed him to.

"I believe one of us is in the wrong-" Norman started to say, but was stopped when the palm of Natasha's hand drove up into his nose with such force that he reeled backward, spraying blood in the air as he fell. He uttered several obscenities before he managed to sputter out, "What is wrong with you?"

"No, the question is, what is wrong with you?" Natasha asked, but she turned and left without saying another word. Best to leave him guessing, she thought with a smirk as she made her way back out to the tables.

Gwen was watching for her and eyed her impatiently until Natasha was in range to hear, "Well?"

In answer, Natasha stepped to the side and allowed Gwen to see Norman leaving the men's room with a wad of red-stained toilet tissue under his nose. He stumbled towards his table with his head tilted back. His business associates rose in alarm and met him halfway, leading him back to the table. The maître d' also raced to their table to see what was wrong. By now, Norman was so embarrassed by all the attention that he yelled at the maître d' that he was fine and led his friends hastily out of the restaurant.

Natasha was back in her seat and trying the French onion soup that had arrived while she was gone. She and Gwen exchanged knowing smiles at each other. They each took a few sips before Gwen said, more seriously, "I've never been a revenge kind of person, I don't think."

"It grows on you," Natasha said with a wink as she had another snail.

"Do you ever want revenge on Zodiac?" Gwen asked, as if she had been screwing up the courage to ask for awhile.

Natasha had started to pick up her soup spoon again and sat it down while she thought for a moment. "I did at first," she confessed without looking directly at Gwen. "I was so hopping mad when Clint found me that I was ready to track down all 12 leaders and, well, do more than break their noses. But the more he told me about the Kree and the threat from space...well, I began to think, 'What's the point?' You know? It just really put my problems in perspective."

"Yeah..." was all Gwen could say. There was a long awkward silence while both women just looked at the food or the table. The alien fleet was the topic they had avoided discussing so as not to "talk shop", as it were, but there was the topic in front of them again. They avoided it further while the waiter came and replaced their soup bowls with fresh plates of salad. Finally, Gwen asked, "Did you ever see the Vice President?"

Natasha shook her head. "No, but I didn't need to. Captain America stepped in and took over trying to persuade the White House of the danger we're in. He got in to see the President, but Humphrey isn't listening. Everyone in Washington is acting like they're pretending they don't hear anything."

Gwen forced a smile. "I got his autograph once for my father. Captain America's, I mean. Is he going to fight the Kree? Is anybody?"

Natasha shrugged. "I don't know. I know Clint is ready. Me too, whether they come before the baby or not. What's the point in staying behind to keep the baby safe if aliens are coming to destroy or enslave us all? The trouble is, ever since the founding members all came back and disbanded the Avengers, there's no organization to Earth's defense. The Fantastic Four should take the lead, but if they're doing anything to get ready they aren't letting the rest of the superhero community in on it."

"What's Clint doing?"

"Fuming," Natasha said, flashing a genuine smile for the first time that day. "Lots of making phone calls to NASA and SHIELD, trying to convince them to give him a rocket. I think he has Wanda and Pietro half persuaded to go with him, try to intercept the fleet in space before they get here. What about Peter?"

"I don't know..." Gwen said, looking concerned for the first time. "He's been so withdrawn lately."

"Because of the Avengers disbanding? He always took being chairman very seriously."

"No. I'm not sure. Peter was even talking about stepping down as chairman before that happened."

"Really? Peter? I didn't think he would ever step down."

"It...might be because of me," Gwen said. She was staring at her salad plate and not looking up. "I had told Peter he needed to find more time for me and Leila now and..."

Gwen had trailed off as the waiter came back. They both reported that everything was excellent so far and he cheerily told them the main course would be arriving soon.

"That's funny, I usually tell Clint to back off because..." Natasha said, but trailed off as she could see that Gwen was not smiling and she was suddenly filled with regret. Gwen had probably agreed to come to dinner to cheer her up and now she had brought Gwen down instead. Natasha bolstered her spirits through sheer willpower, sat up straighter in her chair and said, "Gwen - baby pictures."

A smile slowly crept back over Gwen's face and she went for the purse hanging off the back of her chair. "Well...I do have a few with me," she said, her bubbly self coming back. She fished her wallet out of her purse and removed the photo section entirely. "Here is Leila eating creamed corn. Or wearing most of it. And this one is Leila asleep in her stroller. That's Peter pushing it. And here's Peter and our friend Harry holding Leila between them," Gwen smiled a big smile at each picture, leaning across the table and admiring them with Natasha.

"She is so adorable. And Peter looks like he's so good with her."

"He is, though I had to force him to hold still for those pictures. You'd think with his photography background he would like having his picture taken more."

"And Leila, has she exhibited any superpowers yet?"

"God, no!" Gwen exclaimed, rolling her eyes at the idea. "A regular baby is hard enough to take care of. You think I could handle a super-baby? At least you and Clint won't have to worry about that."

It was truly unlikely for two non-superpowered parents to have superpowered children, but Natasha made a silent prayer asking that her son not be born a mutant anyway. She said nothing out loud about it. The waiter had returned with their entrees. The wine-basted chicken looked delicious.

"What's it like...being with Peter?" Natasha asked hesitantly after the waiter left.

"Well, like I said, it's hectic-"

"No, I mean...what is it like doing...you know...with someone with super strength?"

"Oh...oh! Well..." Gwen looked a little embarrassed, but sat down the photos and leaned in closer. "It's actually pretty dangerous! The first time we did it I could barely walk for days afterwards. I mean, he almost fractured my hip. And Peter, being so protective, didn't even want to try doing it at all after that. It was a few months before I convinced him it was okay to try again."

"Wow. I am so glad Clint has no superpowers! He would wind up killing me for sure. At least now I'm just...side-lined."

"Oh, you don't have to be. Sure, maybe you shouldn't swing into fights and, you know, start karate chopping everyone for awhile, but I can't do any of that and I still help Peter. Not with fighting bad guys, but with looking for clues. Being a forensic scientist, I can be a big help sometimes. And there's other things I do for him too, like when he lets me help track down his 'spider-tracers' with his hand-held tracker. Sometimes I'm even the bait for traps – I prefer it when it's our trap and not someone else's for-" Gwen started to say, but then she covered her mouth and looked to see if Natasha was offended.

"You mean being taken prisoner," Natasha added with a sarcastic smile. "Yeah...I guess that comes with the job whether we have superpowers or not. Sue has powers and she used to say she could almost schedule being used as a hostage on her calendar. Maybe...maybe I've just been feeling too powerless because of what Zodiac did to me. There's still lots I can do to help organize and coordinate for the war that's coming." Natasha raised her hand to flag down the waiter.

"What are you doing?"

"We're taking our dinners to go. There's too much to do to sit and wait for things to happen. Oh, and Gwen...thanks."

Gwen shrugged. "I didn't do anything."

"You were a real morale boost for me today. Peter is lucky to have you."

"I know," Gwen said with her usual smile.

NEXT ISH: Natasha and Clint set up a nursery – oh, and Zodiac returns, along with two other supervillains! It's not all bright and cheery in "Smiling Faces Sometimes!"


	6. Chapter 6

October 28, 1971. Thursday afternoon.  
New York City. Central Park. 

The Astrologer sat on a wrought-iron bench in Central Park, absently watching people passing by amid all the pigeons that waddled underfoot. His juvenile accomplices that Natasha had a run-in with months earlier had been by to see him on their way to school, but the only advisement he'd given them today was on choosing Halloween costumes that would best serve their horoscopes. After they left, he had grown deeply contemplative. The stars were aligning in an intriguing fashion that he did not know how they would bode. Suddenly, one of his insights hit him and he remembered who he agreed he would contact about it – for a small retainer that kept him honest between such insights. He crawled off his bench and jogged in short spurts of activity until he reached a payphone on the edge of the park. He felt around the pockets on his mangy coat until he found a dime for the call.

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Black Widow #6

"Smiling Faces Sometimes"

By Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot

Five minutes earlier.

New York City. Queens Borough.

Clint stood precariously upon a wobbling, child-sized chair that threatened to give out beneath his weight at any moment.

Below, Natasha looked on in utter dread. "Oh this is a disaster waiting to happen! Let me go get a stool from the kitchen!"

"Aww, relax hon. This'll just take another second."

"Another second and you're going to fall and break something," fretted Natasha.

"I don't think everybody's favorite avenging archer who has survived encounters with the Hulk, Doc Doom, and the Masters of Evil, is going wind up in an emergency room from—"

"I'm worried about the chair and the crib you might fall on, not you, idiot!"

The two of them had spent the better part of the day putting together a nursery. The floor was covered with a newly laid light blue carpet that was set off by cheery white furniture. A handcrafted armoire stood against one wall. A toy trunk, next to a miniature rocking horse was filled with stuffed animals.

"I'm not gonna fall," Clint promised. He took a hammer and started pounding a nail through the ceiling in order to hang a mobile above the crib.

Designed by Edwin Jarvis, the mobile displayed the faces of various Avengers, such as Spider-Man, Captain America, and the Vision; their colorful, hand painted countenances sure to be visually stimulating to any baby, would also help accustom the child early on to the frequent sight of strange people in masks.

"There," said Clint, safely stepping down after it was firmly affixed overhead. 

Natasha reached up to spin the mobile. Her face clouded up and she started to cry. "Oh, Clint, it's so beautiful."

Not as much as you are, honey, Clint thought with a contented smile. Almost six months pregnant, in a wool sweater and a pair of drawstring bell-bottom pants, Natasha was never more radiant.

He could not say the same for her gracefulness, however, as with the baby drastically altering her center of gravity and her hormones further throwing off her sense of balance, she almost tripped over the rocking chair – something she never would have done a few months earlier. "Careful—" he started to say to her, but then he remembered that the last time he pointed out her newfound clumsiness to her it made her start crying. Her emotional state was worse than ever and anything seemed to make her break down into tears these days. Clint placed a hand on her upper arm and gave it a squeeze. "So, what do you think? Do you like it all?"

With watery eyes, Natasha gazed around the room. "Well, the color scheme and furnishings are amazing. I think we did a great job, and…and…" she said, choking back tears and sniffing up.

"Hey, what's the matter?" Clint asked. "Great job means a good thing, right?"

"I know. It's just so…beautiful…" Natasha said as tears fell.

Clint tried to change the subject to calm her down. "And you're really okay with the baseball stuff?"

"Well…girls like baseball too."

"What about the cowboy bedding set?" asked Clint, looking to the crib. "I know that growing up I loved cowboys; the Two-Gun Kid was my favorite. But I don't know if it's-"

"No, it's fine," Natasha cut in. "We can… leave it for now," she said with one final sniff.

"Okay," Clint agreed without any at all further need of convincing. He would be glad to get off of the eggshells. He watched Natasha's face to see if her smile would come back. He saw far too little of it of late.

They quickly agreed between a hug and a kiss to go make a snack in the kitchen. The route to the kitchen still felt strange and foreign to them in this new house. After Zodiac had found them in their old place, they gave it up. They had tried staying at Avengers Mansion for just a few weeks, but it did not feel right to raise the baby there, so they had rented this townhouse under assumed names.

No sooner had Natasha fetched the bread out of the bread box when the phone rang.

"Hello?" Natasha answered. "Oh, hi, Wanda! What? Someone called for us at the Mansion? Is it the Astrologer? Yes, transfer the call! Hello, Astrologer. Yes, I'm listening."

Clint stood there, holding a bag of chips in his hands and trying to open it without crinkling the bag too loudly. Natasha hushed him a few times and he slunk further away to eat his chips. He waited patiently until Natasha was done listening and off the phone. "Well?" he asked.

"I know where Zodiac will be tonight," she said.

October 28, 1971. Thursday, late evening.  
New York City, Midtown.

The helicopter touched down on the lit-up landing pad atop the Chanin Building on 42nd Street. Two men in flak jackets and helmets, carrying customized assault rifles, exited the helicopter first. The third man to exit the helicopter wore a navy blue business suit, unusually attired only that he was wearing a blindfold. This handicap did not seem to slow him down at all, as he turned away from the 56 story drop to the street below and headed straight for the roof access to the building with his two armed guards in tow. He paused only long enough to allow them to check the door for him and then, once inside, the door to the stairwell.

Two floors below, they exited the stairwell and found the door to the abandoned observatory, that should have been locked, unlocked. Inside, some of the equipment of the old observatory remained, covered in dusty sheets. Standing between these relics of an earlier decade were six men in suits holding M16 assault rifles, and a seventh man in a brown suit who was unarmed and wearing a gold mask of a bull's head.

"Only two guards?" Taurus, the bull-masked man, asked. "You trust me more than I thought."

"I'll trust my men can handle yours if it came to that, but you did not ask me to come to New York City for a shootout," Libra, the blindfolded man, said.

"No, I asked for this meeting so you can tell me what you know about a possible alien invasion," Taurus said.

"You know?" Libra asked with surprise.

"I didn't for certain until now. I have heard things, though. Horoscopes that hint at some impending peril from the stars themselves. As the current holder of the Zodiac Key, only you might have gleaned more concrete knowledge."

"And why should I be sharing this with you instead of the entire Zodiac?"

"Because I—" Taurus began to say, but he stopped and looked to the door to the room as it burst open. There was a blur of green that flew through the room and created a powerful breeze that made the room's dusty sheets fly about like ghosts.

"Quicksilver! Shoot him!" Libra shouted, but by then four of the eight guards had already had their weapons snatched out of their hands. Of the remaining four, two fired wildly and only Libra's two guards managed to anticipate Quicksilver's path through the room and forced him to find cover.

Or so they assumed until everyone heard the grinding of mechanical parts stirring to life after years of disuse.

"He's found the controls for the observatory dome!" Taurus shouted. "Close it quick or the-"

The warning came too late as a gunshot cracked off from above. Hawkeye's custom arquebus fired a canister into the room below, a canister that quickly began belching huge clouds of black smoke into the air.

Some of the armed guards noticed Hawkeye descending into the room on a cable unwinding from the winch attachment on his arquebus, but whenever they tried to aim for him they found their guns jamming.

"The Scarlet Witch is in here somewhere!" Libra shouted after hearing some of the men complaining. "It's time to upgrade to better options," he added more quietly as he held out his hand and the Zodiac Key appeared in it.

"I did not come unprepared either," Taurus said. He pulled out a small device from a pocket and pressed a button on it. In response, what had appeared to be a huge projector in the room whirred to life. Mechanical limbs unfolded from inside the projector and it became a giant robot. A blast of compressed air came from the robot and dispersed enough of the black smoke that Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye were all visible. While Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch attended to the robot, Hawkeye stood opposite Libra and had his arquebus squarely aimed at him.

"Put down the Key, Libra," Hawkeye said.

"Do you really think you're faster on the trigger than a mystical artifact?" Libra asked, unfazed and sarcastic.

"No…" Hawkeye said.

"But he doesn't have to be!" Black Widow said. Her black uniform was stretched tight over her stomach, but the electricity-firing bracelet she wore on the right hand pointed at Libra's back seemed to fit just fine. Taurus was backing away, but Black Widow wouldn't have that. "Stay where you are, Taurus!" she yelled, pointing her other hand at him.

The robot collapsed on the other side of the room with a terrific amount of noise. When the noise from that and the ongoing battle subsided somewhat, Libra said calmly, "I'm listening. I presume you engineered this stand-off to talk?"

"I think it's crazy," Hawkeye said, "but the Widow wants to ask you two something."

"How would you like a truce?" Black Widow asked.

"I'm still listening," Libra said. "Why would I want a truce?"

"Because something big is happening," Black Widow answered. "Bigger than whatever plans you have for world domination or making a boatload of money or whatever motivates you personally. Bigger than my desire to kick Taurus' butt right now, or yours if you had anything to do with my kidnapping as well. An alien invasion fleet is heading towards Earth. We have no idea when it will get here, but some of their advance scouts are here already."

"You want us to fight for you?" Taurus asked as if aghast at the notion.

"We don't expect you to get too altruistic, but there are other things you could do to help. You seem to have a lot of hi-tech and mystical gadgets that you keep using against us. Maybe you could let us have the ones you already know can't defeat us and we could use those to help us fight."

"I don't think Taurus likes that idea," Hawkeye said, keeping an eye on both master villains. "I say we go with my idea - haul them both off to jail and take as much of their toys as we want while they rot in a jail cell."

"And waste precious energy on us instead of preparing for the more serious foe," Libra countered. "I see why your wife has made the offer she has, Hawkeye. And, whether you believe me or not, I had nothing to do with your kidnapping, Black Widow. Taurus overstepped his bounds when he arranged that. Cancer was in charge of the cartel at that time and I believe he did not have Cancer's authorization."

"None of that tells me what we came here to find out, Libra," Black Widow said.

By now, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch had dealt with both the robot and all eight guards. The remaining Avengers, Spider-Man and the Black Knight, showed up hauling in unconscious back-up guards that had apparently been stationed elsewhere in the building.

"Are we in the wrong room?" Spider-Man asked as he added three guards to the pile Quicksilver had made. "This sounds more like a book discussion group than a battle with Zodiac."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Spider-Man," Libra said. "And Black Widow - I will consider your suggestion." With that, a bright flash of light burst forth from the Zodiac Key. The Avengers stepped back and shielded their eyes. When the light faded, Libra and Taurus were gone.

"Well, that was disappointing," Hawkeye said.

"No, I think it was promising," Black Widow countered. "If we can find common ground with our enemies, maybe we won't have supervillains to fight anymore someday."

"Who'll read my comic books then?" Spider-Man quipped.

October 28, 1971. Thursday, later that same night.

Somewhere under New York City. 

The Mad Thinker was standing deep in his underground lair in front of a bank of computers when the security alarm sounded, signaling intruders. Perhaps it was the Fantastic Four, he thought in a panic,  
though he could not grasp just how they could have located him. He quickly moved over to a keyboard to activate all his defenses – something that would have been automated at his old bases.

His eyes moved searchingly from one small black and white monitor to another, trying to see just who he was dealing with. The criminal genius grit his teeth at being reduced to such second-grade equipment. His previous devices, including his famous Awesome Android having all been confiscated in previous arrests by law enforcement. What now served as the current main computer of his base, a ten-year-old Cray that was barely adequate to his needs, was constantly overheating due to a faulty cooling unit almost as large as the supercomputer itself, and which to his great dismay kept leaking Freon. He ignored the ether smell of it as he targeted a hallway-mounted machine gun armed with armor-piercing rounds on a doorway that motion detectors indicated the intruders would soon emerge from.

"Where are they? Who are they?" he wondered aloud, running his hands through his long, tussled hair.

"I'm quite alone, actually," came a voice from directly behind him. "Your instruments detected multiple intruders only because I move rather fast."

The Thinker twisted around with a start to see a distinguished looking man with short-cropped brown hair dressed in a suit and tie. "Who the devil are you?" the Thinker asked angrily.

The man walked forward boldly and calmly, extending his hand as if he were showing up for a business meeting. "The name is Kline."

The Thinker hesitated and looked at the hand. "I would need more time to do proper calculations, but off the top of my head there is almost a 50-percent chance that you are here to do me harm and almost a 5-percent chance that you are here to hire me. I will hope it is one or the other, as the nearly 5-percent chance that you are just here to impress me would make me rather sad."

"You should also be thankful that my motives are not match your first calculation," Kline said calmly, "As I doubt your defenses could even have stopped a common burglar."

The Thinker smiled coldly. "I am all-too aware of the deficiencies in my equipment. Since you are too, that makes me curious why you would hire me. I calculate a 75-percent chance that you wish me to kill someone. I so hate mercenary work, but I do need the funds."

"You will acquire funds and the superior technology you are accustomed to," Kline responded in his quick, smooth manner, "once the Black Widow is dead."

_NEXT ISH: What is Kline's plan? What will the Mad Thinker do? How many supervillains will he need to do it? What does it all have to do with Viet Nam and ice cream? Find out these answers and more in "If You Could Read My Mind!"_


	7. Chapter 7

Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Black Widow #7

By Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot

"If You Could Read My Mind!"

November 13, 1971. Saturday morning.  
The aboveground entrance to a secret lair.

Electro was, surprisingly, not necessarily the most gaudily-dressed man to show up in the closed pawnshop. Though Electro wore a form-fitting green bodysuit with yellow lightning bolts running up and down it and a large yellow mask that looked like a mass of sparks, the Melter had shown up right after him wearing a dark blue helmet with large, flared ear flaps, a blue and green tight bodysuit, a full cape that matched his helmet, and some sort of mechanical apparatus slung over his chest that connected down to what looked like an over-sized metal girdle.

Tame by comparison, Stiltman had shown up next, wearing a gray metal, stiff-looking battlesuit with a tall metal cowl behind his masked head. Tamer still was the next man, a scruffy-looking fellow with bushy hair in normal street clothes, clutching what looked like a trumpet case under his arm. Everyone looked him up and down dismissively, which made him clutch his case more securely and move to the corner of the room to wait.

The fifth man to arrive in the increasingly crowded pawnshop wore a suit of green-painted chainmail armor and a matching gas mask.

"Who are you supposed to be?" Electro asked. "Chemistopheles," the man in green replied, after which he coughed into his gas mask.

At 9:59 am, an old man with thin white hair wearing a business suit walked in the front door. He looked around the room without alarm at the four occupants. In his hand, he held a 3 x 5-inch laminated card.

"I trust," the old man said coolly, "that all of you received these same invitations?"

"I did," Stiltman replied. "Said if I wanted to get rich, to come here before 10 am this morning, only through the front door, and wait until 10 with five others before opening the door at the back of the room."

"Has anyone checked out the door to see if this is a trap?" the old man asked.

"About a half-hour ago, Gramps," Electro replied. "It looks to be conventionally locked, but I bet it's booby-trapped."

"I tried to melt the lock," Melter said, "but it's chemically treated to resist my melting ray."

"Well, gentlemen, since it is now 10 am," the man said, glancing at his wristwatch, "I suggest we give the door another try."

Stiltman tried the door handle and found that, this time, the door opened easily. Behind the door was nothing but the inside of what looked like a freight elevator.

"After you, Gramps," Electro said, "unless elevators might give you a heart attack."

"Young man," the old man said calmly, "I've been face-to-face with Thor. You couldn't give me a heart attack if you sprouted three heads and started breathing fire.

The six men crowded into the elevator, their mounting curiosity overriding common sense.

On the level below them, the man known as the Mad Thinker monitored the results from the scanning devices hidden in the elevator. Saved on his computer was now all the information he could ever want on these six men and how their assorted paraphernalia worked. He wrung his hands with excitement as he read through some of the results. 

Mr. Kline stood in the far corner of the spacious laboratory. He coughed to get the Mad Thinker's attention before saying, "They are almost here. Don't get so caught up in your precious data that you forget the mission." 

The Mad Thinker turned to look at Mr. Kline and gave him an evil grin. "Of course not, Mr. Kline," he said. Then the Thinker stood up and turned to face the elevator just as its doors opened. "Gentlemen, welcome! Please, file in and I will explain why I have summoned you all here. As you may or may not know, I was once one of the most powerful independent gang leaders in the country until my first defeat at the hands of the Fantastic Four. Each of you is a rising star in this same territory. Professor Zaxton – a geneticist with a reputation for 'mad science' to rival my own; faked his own death to evade capture by Thor and has been quietly building his own gang ever since. Chemistopheles, previously known as the Asbestos Man – returned to crime after a long sabbatical for health reasons. Liso Trago, the 'Man with the Magic Trumpet'; through means even I cannot identify, the songs he plays can mesmerize entire audiences and, doing so, has built for himself the largest gang in Connecticut. And the last three need less introduction since they have committed more public crime waves – Stiltman, Melter, and Electro. I believe Electro has the largest gang of any of you, though it has stayed strictly penny-ante to remain under the radar of the superheroes."

"We know who we are," Melter said. "Get to the point of what you want us for."

"Of course," the Thinker said with the same evil grin. "I am offering each of you the chance to be a lieutenant in my new organization. In exchange for your autonomy, I offer you protection from the 'superhero' community."

"And how are you going to do that when the Fantastic Four alone can give you so much trouble?" Stiltman asked.

"Allow me to show you how," the Thinker said, as he pushed a button on the control panel near him.

A section of wall in the lab began to rotate. Concealed behind the other side of it was a hairless giant 12 feet tall with red skin and horizontal lines across its body, as if it were segmented. It wore what appeared to be black rubber trousers and boots.

"What is this?" Electro asked as sparks fell from his fingers. "Target practice?"

"This is an android," the Thinker explained. "And not one of my design either, but one made years ago by a rival of mine called Egghead. It cannot be traced back to me by any means, which is important because in one hour it is going to kill the Black Widow."

Chemistopheles had begun coughing again, but held it back long enough to ask, "How does killing an Avenger benefit us?"

"Think, gentlemen. Most of the 'superheroes' active today have been so for six to eight years now. Though still active vigilantes, most of them are also settling down and starting families, as you will have observed with the Fantastic Four. The Black Widow is, herself, married and planning to start a family. The 'superhero' community has already had a demoralizing blow with the death of Daredevil. Think how further demoralizing it will be for the 'superheroes' when a wife and expectant mother from their ranks is killed. I predict a majority of 'superheroes' will scale back to safer vigilante work after this. This would jeopardize your currently small operations, but banded together we will form an organization too dangerous for the 'superheroes' to touch."

"I suppose that sounds reasonable to presume," Prof. Zaxton said. "What involvement are we to have in this unfortunate woman's death?"

"Nothing but to stay here and observe," the Thinker responded. "A protest rally is building in numbers right now in Central Park. In…" the Thinker paused to check a timer on a nearby monitor, "two hours and five minutes, the Black Widow will pass by the protestors. At that moment, the android will attack the rally. The predictable altruism of the 'superheroes' will kick in and she will choose to risk her life against the android, even though she will be hopelessly outclassed by it. Three minutes later, the Black Widow will be dead. If all these things come to pass as I've predicted, then you will join me. If I have failed, you may all go your separate ways."

November 13, 1971. Late Saturday morning.  
Tom's Diner, Columbus Ave., Manhattan.

Natasha had long imagined how great it would be to bear a child into the world, even though she was not sure how she would ever fit it into her adventurous lifestyle. Now, in the twenty-eighth week of her pregnancy and the start of the third trimester, she would settle for being able to fit her stomach into her pants again. The baby's heart beating inside her, ready to be born soon, might have been a miracle but she never felt more disgusting. The former ballerina had been reduced to what often seemed like the mobility of an elderly walrus, her once lovely skin today sweaty and itchy, and her perfect physical conditioning and muscularity melting away not unlike the two hot fudge sundaes that sat on the table in front of her.

Needing to get off her feet on a Manhattan shopping trip, she had ducked into a little New York diner and purchased the double order of desserts without so much as a shred of guilt. On the contrary, Natasha felt she was due to treating herself to whatever she wanted, and when she was done devouring the chocolate sundaes she might just get another two; butterscotch and strawberry, or maybe a banana split, she thought with due consideration, knowing she would then be pleasuring her taste buds at the same time she was nourishing the baby with a healthy dose of potassium.

"Would that make you happy, you little brat?" Natasha whispered to her stomach. "Will a banana split get you to move off my bladder?"

"Soon as I finish my coffee I'll be heading right over," spoke a nearby customer rather loudly, interrupting her one-sided dialog with her stomach's occupant.

Natasha turned to see a longhaired man in a tie-dye shirt and brown bellbottom pants at the neighboring table, the man pointing to the black and white television behind the counter showing news coverage of the rally.

"For Pete's sake," he said animatedly to the waitress. "It's almost 1972. So what are we still doing there?"

By there, Natasha knew of course he meant Vietnam.

"Ike got us involved there more 'en ten years ago, and I figured Tricky Dick Nixon would be in no hurry getting us out, so's why I an' everyone I know voted for Humphrey. We elected him to end this war! But he hasn't done it, has he?"

"No, not yet," answered the waitress who, to Natasha's eyes, looked like she was hiding her impatience with the man who was supposed to be paying his bill.

"I'll say one thing for Ike," said the protester, wrapping up his impassioned tirade. "He did warn us about the military industrial complex. Ike said they had too much power, an' Anthony Stark is a card carryin' member. The war suits his pocket book. That must be why the Avengers don't just swoop in an' put a stop to it."

Natasha had to force herself to hold her tongue. She would never get her sundaes eaten if she found herself in a shouting match with every young man or woman who objected to the Vietnam War.

"Some heroes," scoffed the young man in disgust. "The Avengers should be ashamed o' themselves." He slammed his empty coffee cup down on the table with one hand and slapped some dollars and change on the table with his other hand. Then, as bad luck would have it, his gaze happened to pass over Natasha. Natasha had figured she looked so fat and horrible now that she did not even bother with a disguise today. As the young man slowed his pace to the exit and kept staring at her, she knew she had been recognized already and the man was just deciding if he should say anything to her.

"Well, well, well," said the man. He sauntered over to her table with a defiant swagger that only annoyed Natasha more. "You're the Black Widow, aren't you? I've seen your face before on TV! What're you doin' here? Come to help with the protest?"

Natasha shrugged, not willing to confirm or deny anything he said in the hope that he would go away.

The man smiled, clearly pleased with himself that he had found her out. "Nice disguise," he said. "Dressin' up like you're fat."

Natasha's green eyes flashed at this, and she glared up at the man with a mixture of anger and bemusement. He thought this was a disguise? Before she could put him straight, he brazenly sat down at her table to treat her to a piece of his dope-fried mind.

"Listen here, sister," the man said, getting bolder. "I and the free thinking American youth want to know just why you and the rest of your super friends are letting the war go on in Vietnam - you cats could end the whole thing anytime you want!"

Natasha groaned inwardly. "It's not that simple…"

"Sure it is! Heck, you can just send Thor over to have a little chat with Ho Chi Minh, and that there would probably do the trick!" 

"Well, it certainly would cure him of his atheism," she said, slightly amused by the thought.

The man scowled. "You joke and sit here stuffing your face, when Humphrey's still got 130,000 troops over there fighting!"

"Yes, but-"

"An' have the Avengers even been over there yet?"

Yes, they had, Natasha knew, but it had been three years since the Avengers had been asked to leave. In exchange for the superhero community staying out of Viet Nam, the Chinese agreed to no longer send troops into Viet Nam through Cambodia and Laos, something that would end the war so much sooner. Not that she could tell this jerk that, as that was of course highly classified. Nor would it do any good to mention that the war in Viet Nam was actually small potatoes compared to the coming war with the Kree Galactic Empire. "We're right not to get involved," she told him, not free to say anything else.

"Right by Stark you mean," the man said in barely restrained anger.

Sighing, Natasha rose, hefting her body out of the chair and after paying, got up and left. She continued down 77th Street, past the American Museum of Natural History, pausing at Central Park West to rest her legs and momentarily sit down her shopping bags. Her motorcycle was just a block away, but from here she could hear a voice on a bullhorn from inside Central Park and knew the protest was forming. There were two news vans parked on the curb across the street, their occupants no doubt covering the rally as it got started. And Natasha had to admit to herself that she was both curious and concerned about this event. She had thought she had seen the last of the war protests a year ago, but she had also hoped the war would be over by now a year ago. Maybe there was some justification left in the righteous anger of that young man in the diner that so evil a thing could continue in a world with superheroes. 

Perhaps, Natasha mused, she could stop this whole thing by going up in front of the rally and telling everyone about the far larger, threatening war approaching from the depths of space that threatened all of humanity. Yes, there might be mass panic, but perhaps it would also bring people together in common purpose. The Kree scouting parties the Avengers had found and captured claimed the main armada was coming in just a few more months and the Avengers still did not know how they would turn it back. 

Sudden screams woke Natasha from her thoughts. People started to flee from the interior of the park, heading for the street. Natasha dropped her bags, checked the street for traffic, and started to run across it towards the fleeing people. She only halted as she saw the source of the commotion and her breath caught in her throat. Was it a Kree sentry?

But no - upon close scrutiny she saw the twelve-foot giant was not the product of a distant, star-faring empire, but probably some more mundane threat. It waded into the gathering of protesters and started swinging its arms through them, knocking a few men and women into the air with each swing. Why was it attacking the protesters? No matter. She had to stop it before it could hurt anyone. Natasha pulled her widow's sting device out of her purse and began to strap it in place on her arm. As she moved closer and observed the slowly advancing giant longer, she guessed from its appearance and movement that it was mechanical in nature – some sort of giant robot after all. She was not sure how much good her sting would do against that robot, but if she could strike it in the right spot, scramble its operating memory or disrupt its power system before it could land a blow against her she might…

Natasha flinched as if she had just received a blow. It was a minor, very soft one from within her. A kick from her baby. She clutched her stomach in sudden, stark realization.

The giant or robot or whatever lumbered on, almost as if it were coming for her. It trampled some people in its way, while others ran, jumped clear, or those who had been knocked down by the fleeing crowd rolled out of its way. Those who jumped or rolled – Natasha wondered if she was even that agile or capable of moving that fast now. She chided herself at her foolishness, to think of charging into battle in her condition, and with the tiny life inside she would be so terribly endangering. She held onto her stomach with both hands and backed away.

Watching the chaotic scene a moment longer as the robot continued its rampage, Natasha finally turned, and joined the rest of the fleeing crowd. It went against her hero's instinct, but followed a much stronger one. A mother's.

November 13, 1971. Early Saturday afternoon.  
The Mad Thinker's lair.

The assembled criminals all watched the proceedings on a closed-circuit television screen. There had been some chuckles of amusement at first when the android attacked the crowd, but they had since trailed off to awkward silence as more time passed and the Black Widow never appeared on the screen. It was not until they saw S.H.I.E.L.D flying cars swoop down into the park and uniformed agents swarm out to attack the android that someone finally spoke up.

"I guess that ain't part of your plan?" Electro asked sarcastically.

The Mad Thinker shot him an angry glare. "No, I had factored in a 74.3-percent chance of some form of back-up arriving to aid the Black Widow before she died, but all my simulations still showed that she would be killed in the battle."

"Only, there's no Black Widow," Melter said.

"I-I can't understand," the Mad Thinker said, his eyes going back and forth between the television screen and the nearest computer monitor. "I considered every variable and there was never less than a 96.9-percent chance of her entering the park."

"You considered every variable...in a pregnant woman," Prof. Zaxton said. "Tell me, Thinker. Have you known many pregnant women?"

The Mad Thinker was too busy to notice the hint of sarcasm in Zaxton's question until Stiltman snickered. Then the Thinker spun around and looked from face to face, fully cognizant from his own projections that there was a 60-percent chance they would all leave if the Black Widow did not die as he had predicted.

"Man..." Trago said, shaking his head. He turned his back on the Thinker and headed back to the elevator.

"I'm with Trumpet Boy," Electro announced as he turned and left.

Chemistopheles and Melter turned to leave at the same time. "Say, you wouldn't happen to be interested in helping me reform the Frightful Four, would you?" Chemistopheles asked Melter.

Stiltman and Prof. Zaxton stayed the longest to watch as the android was defeated by about two dozen S.H.I.E.L.D agents, with no sign of the Black Widow ever showing. After they were gone, the Mad Thinker looked to the corner of the room, where Mr. Kline had gone unnoticed by the others all along.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Thinker," Mr. Kline said. "I suppose I will have to deal with this on my own."

_NEXT ISH: It's time for Natasha's baby shower at Avengers Mansion. A happy, joyous occasion, right? Not in the same month that Avengers #94 came out! See you in 4 weeks for "Behold the Mandroids - at My Baby Shower!"_


	8. Chapter 8

"Behold the Mandroids – at My Baby Shower!"

December 11, 1971. Saturday afternoon.

Avengers Mansion. Two hundred feet above it and dropping.

Half of the Fantasticar was coming down for a vertical landing on the lawn of Avengers Mansion. Internal gyros, normally strained to the utmost by balancing the craft under the Thing's fearsome weight, were burdened instead only by the encumbrance of two women in Fantastic Four uniforms – Sue Richards and Alicia Grimm.

"What's wrong?" Alicia asked, which surprised Sue because she had not even said anything yet. Of course, she had probably heard shouting from below over the "woosh" of the Fantasticar's hover jets.

"In the street below," Sue said, "more protesters complaining about the Avengers. But worse than that, the National Guard is closing in on the mansion."

"Do you think there'll be violence?" Alicia asked as the amazing craft landed within the walled enclosure of the mansion's grounds, well out of reach of the protesters and picketers outside the walls.

"I don't know," Sue said. She paused to see if Alicia needed help exiting the Fantasticar only to see Alicia hop out on her own. Sue grabbed their wrapped present box out of the front seat instead. "But I'll tell you one thing," she continued as they walked up to the front door of the mansion, "not a word about it to Natasha if we can help it. I just hope this doesn't spoil her party."

No sooner had they reached the front door than it opened. To their surprise, they were greeted at the door by Hercules.

"Well! Are these two younger sisters of Aphrodite I have never met before?" Hercules asked to flatter them. His voice was so deep Sue and Alicia felt like they could get lost in it. His accent was neither Greek nor Italian nor Elizabethan English, but seemed to have the best elements of all three – whatever one considered those best elements to be. He was wearing a white dress shirt and gray slacks, but his muscles were bulging under his garb so much he looked like he was in danger of popping his buttons every time he inhaled. When he touched each of their hands, his touch was gentle and when he kissed their hands their legs felt wobbly. Then, when he was done with welcoming them, he turned more serious. "You will find the others in the library already. And do not worry about this rabble outside. If any man here," he said, now loudly enough to be heard by everyone out on the street, "dares interrupt the festivities within, they will answer to Hercules!"

Sue and Alicia walked in past Hercules and, being familiar with the mansion, made their way unescorted through the dining room to the library.

"He looked as dreamy as he sounded, didn't he?" Alicia asked.

"Uh-huh," was all Sue could say. Even though both women were in their mid-30s, Hercules had made them feel as giddy as schoolgirls.

Gwen Parker met them at the library door. Since she did not have a costume to wear to the party, she had come in a casual, diamond-patterned top and matching miniskirt. "Hey!" she said and embraced both women with a hug. "We've been waiting for you," Gwen said. "Come in!"

The library was decorated with streamers and a banner declaring "Happy Baby Shower, Natasha!" The carpet was littered with confetti.

"Oh, I'm so glad you could come!" Janet Pym said as she came out from behind the portable wet bar set up for the party. "Sue, is that your original FF costume? You look terrific in it!"

"Yes, it still fits!" Sue said as the women hugged and kissed. "I wasn't coming back to New York to my old friends without getting back in shape. But where's your costume, Jan?"

Janet Pym had worn four different costumes before she retired in '68, but now she was wearing none of them – just a Halston white satin halter dress. "Dear," Janet said, putting her hands on her hips and standing like a model, "anything I wear is a costume!"

Everyone had a good laugh at that, including the next closest woman. Elizabeth also went by "Betty" or "Betsy" and back in the late '40s was also known as Golden Girl, but lately she was known more as Mrs. Rogers or, to those in the know, the wife of Captain America. She was the oldest woman here by 15 years and her face was wrinkled and a little saggy under her black domino mask, but she still looked to be in good shape under the long, yellow evening gown she used to wear while fighting crime. Good sport that she was, she had even worn her black hair – dyed black to hide all the white – up just as she used to wear it to go with the theme of Janet's baby shower plan. She hugged and kissed both Sue and Alicia too when it was her turn, as everyone here were good friends. "Janet has been telling us stories of what it was like being the only female Avenger back in the beginning," Elizabeth said, "and making us all jealous. How are you liking being the only woman in the Fantastic Four now, Alicia?"

"That's not entirely true," Alicia said. "Crystal puts on a costume and joins us sometimes too. Now, if someone could point me to Natasha I've got hugs to dispense over there too."

"You'd better come over here, because I'm not sure I can get up out of this chair," Natasha joked and everyone had another good laugh. Natasha had swollen up hugely in her final months of pregnancy and looked like she was ready to pop any day now. Her maternity dress looked nothing like the tight black uniform she usually wore at Avengers Mansion.

"I think," Sue said, "that you had better see our present before we do anything else." The cover of her box was wrapped separately and was easily removed. After taking it off, Sue lifted a helmet full of electronics out of the box. "Reed built this," Sue continued, "and I'd better tell you the story behind it before you put it on. As you know, the Fantastic Four has been busy lately without explaining why. For the last four months, we've been dealing with another extraterrestrial threat. A powerful entity calling itself Overmind came to Earth promising to save us from the coming attacks of both the Kree and Skrull armadas for a price – the mental enslavement of every mind on Earth. We've driven it away, but not before it had...tinkered with a lot of people's minds."

"Surely our minds are alright," Natasha said. "I don't feel any different."

"We'll find out in a moment," Sue said as she brought the helmet over to Natasha. "This machine should disrupt any outside influence on your mind if there's been any. And, Reed assures me, it's perfectly safe for you and the baby."

"I guess it won't hurt to try, then..." Natasha said as she hesitantly took the helmet and put it on. "Oh!" she cried out right away. "Oh no!"

Everyone else tensed, fearing this was some trick from a disguised enemy, but Natasha did not seem to be in pain, just surprised.

"Wanda and Pietro!" Natasha cried, struggling to get out of her chair. "I can't believe we abandoned them when the Super-Skrull took them prisoner!"

Sue just nodded knowingly. "Reed thinks up to a million minds were tampered with by Overmind, usually just making them more complacent and accepting than usual to prevent heavy resistance to his takeover of Earth."

Everyone in the room then agreed to try on the helmet, though only Janet found herself surprised by her suppressed thoughts. "I can't believe I didn't come out of retirement already and help out," she told everyone. "I'm sorry."

"I thought it was odd that there was no rescue mission already," Gwen said, "but I just assumed I was being kept out of the loop about something."

"Sadly, you weren't," Natasha said. "Now, is someone going to help me out of this chair so we can do something about them?"

"Oh no you don't," Janet said, pushing her back down in her chair. "For one thing, you're going to have to sit this mission out. And a second thing is that we have a baby shower that's barely started yet. Wanda and Pietro have waited this long and I'm sure they wouldn't want to deny you your shower."

"What about telling the other Avengers?" Natasha asked.

"We can do that and kill two birds with one stone," Janet said cryptically. She pressed an intercom button in the room and said, "Oh, Hercules, would you kindly come back to the library?"

Janet poured drinks for everyone while they waited for Hercules.

"I am here," Hercules said, announcing his arrival as if it was necessary, "but I am puzzled by your request," he said as he walked into the middle of the library and began to slowly undo the buttons of his dress shirt. "I normally go shirtless in combat, so I do not see why watching me take off a shirt is any more exciting."

"Oh believe me, we do," Janet said as she sipped her banana daiquiri. Everyone else seemed to agree and the rescue mission was temporarily forgotten.

Hercules was slipping off his shirt when there came a loud commotion from outside. Everyone paused, because a voice was clearly audible, though it was coming from outside the mansion. It was hard to make out what he was saying through the thick walls, but it was clearly someone using a bullhorn.

"Attention, Avengers!" everyone could hear clearly when it was repeated even louder, and the voice was now unmistakably that of Senator Craddock himself. Everyone had heard him, either in person or on television, dozens of times calling for the arrest of the Avengers.

"Pardon me, ladies," Hercules said. "I shall attend to this beside the other Avengers. We shall let nothing interfere with your party, Natasha." With that, the Prince of Power turned and swept out of the room, leaving every woman present feeling a little soberer and a lot less like celebrating.

"It's alright," Natasha told everyone. "Craddock is crazy, but he won't stand up long to Hercules."

Sue looked around the room, hesitant to bring this up. "It might turn worse than you think," she said at last and then went on to describe the activities of the National Guard outside.

Natasha looked around at each of the five other women with her and saw that they had all known more about what was going on outside. "And no one was going to tell me anything?"

"And ruin your party?" Jan asked back. "I know I wasn't going to say anything unless the mansion was actually being invaded."

The rumble of combat coming from outside suggested that Jan's comment might not be far from coming true.

"I don't understand any of it," Alicia said. "I mean, I know he claims the Avengers committed treason when you didn't hand your Kree prisoners over to the government right away, but…"

"You must be too young to remember what McCarthyism was like," Betsy said. "Some politicians think the louder they speak against other people, the more people who hate and mistrust will support them."

"I know all that," Alicia said, her brow furrowed with concern, "but I am sure there's something more to it than that even. I just don't know what it is…"

The conversation was interrupted by what sounded like an explosion at the south end of the mansion. Gwen, who was closest to the door, opened it and leaned out into the dining room. "Um," she said, "does anyone else think that sounded like it came from the kitchen?"

"The mansion's been breached. Come on," Natasha said. She tried to spring out of her chair, but the child in her stomach would not let her. She held the arms of her chair tightly and struggled to her feet.

"Where do you think you're going?" Betsy asked sternly, stepping in front of her.

"I'll look into it," Sue said, as she turned invisible. "Everyone keep Natasha from leaving this room."

"I'll follow behind in case you need backup," Jan said before she left, either before or after Sue, none could tell.

Natasha took a step forward before Betsy put her hand on Natasha's chest to stop her. Natasha looked her grimly in the eye and said, "Betsy, you're what, 52? And you haven't been Golden Girl since 1949? Even eight months pregnant, you couldn't stop me from leaving this room."

"Natasha," Alicia said, stepping up beside Betsy, "I'm blind and I can see that you shouldn't get involved in this fight. Why can't you?"

_Because I'm a hero!_ She wanted to say, but it was heroes she was speaking to, so that seemed insufficient to sway them. She started to speak, though she hardly knew what words would come out, but was cut off by the sound of shooting coming from much closer, perhaps even the south end of the gallery.

"I'm going out there to lend a hand," Betsy said.

"I can help," Alicia said.

"Gwendolyn, it's up to you. Don't let Natasha out of this room," Betsy said before she and Alicia left.

Natasha ran to her handbag the moment they were out of the room and took out of it her "widow's sting" bracelets.

"What did everyone just tell you?" Gwen asked, stepping between Natasha and the door as Natasha was putting her bracelets on.

"They were telling me that heroes do selfless things, Gwen," Natasha said. "And tell me this – if they had asked you to stand between Peter and what his sense of responsibility told him to do, would you stop him?"

Gwen only had to think about that for a moment before she stepped aside, but she put her hand on Natasha's shoulder as she passed Gwen. "Wait," Gwen said. "Give me a bracelet."

"You're not a hero," Natasha said.

"Like heck I'm not. You think that waiting for Peter to come home safely adventure after adventure isn't selfless? I may be no fighter, but neither are you in your condition."

Natasha thought about it for only a moment before handing over one of her bracelets and giving Gwen rapid instructions on how they worked. What sounded like rockets being launched and exploding at point blank range stopped the instructions prematurely. The explosions shook the library and were echoed by similar noises coming from outside.

"The rest of the Avengers must be dealing with the same threat outside," Natasha said. "Come on."

They did not have far to go to find signs of the combat. The south wall of the dining room had a gaping hole blasted through it from the other side and something big was moving towards it from the south end of the gallery. It was looked like a man-shaped robot with gleaming yellow armor. It was maybe nine feet tall, walking with its head hunched forward but still scraping the low ceiling. It had barrel-like weapons instead of hands and big cables leading from the weapons to its back. It looked exactly like mandroid battle armor, in fact, such as the Avengers were facing outside the mansion at that exact same moment for the first time.

The mansion's defensive system had activated and even while the south end of the mansion was being drenched in flame-retardant foam by the sprinkler system, some of the sprinklers were dumping a glue-like foam that hardened around the intruder and slowed its movement, only to crumble and break and allow it full movement again.

"This way," Natasha whispered. "If it's heading for the hole, we can come around it from the entrance and flank it."

It was a sound plan, or would have been had the intruder been heading for the hole. When Natasha and Gwen came around the corner, the metal giant was already facing them and raising its weapons to attack.

"Get back!" Natasha yelled. Fearing that Gwen would freeze up in combat, as she appeared to be doing, Natasha pushed her around the corner and prayed the cover would shield her. There was no time to save both of them. Three mini-rockets launched with a "Fwoosh-fwoosh-fwoosh" from the arm of the metal giant and sped straight for Natasha. The mini-rockets would have easily have hit their target too, had they not been deflected at the last moment by an angled invisible forcefield. The rockets bounced off and sailed into the wall of the thankfully empty staff quarters, as there was little wall left there when the dust and smoke cleared.

"Where is everyone else?" Natasha asked as she and Gwen opened fire on their attacker with electricity arcing from the bracelets. Sparks showered from the electricity striking the attacker. The air sizzled and stank of ozone now, in addition to the smell of rocket propellant hanging heavy in the air. The attacker paused, as if accessing the strength of their attack.

"We've had some injuries already, none serious," Sue said from somewhere nearby. "I ordered everyone else to get out. What are you doing here?"

"Helping you delay this thing until the boys get done outside and come help us," Natasha said.

"Cant' we stop him?" Gwen asked.

"Alicia says it's a robot, not a person in there," Sue said. "She would sense something like that. But we don't have anything between us that can stop this robot."

Natasha's mind raced. "What about the helmet you brought to the party?" she said on a sudden inspiration. "If it can wipe out implanted thoughts, could it do anything to circuitry?"

There was a moment's pause before Sue answered, "Yes, I think so, if we overloaded it!"

"Go get it!" Natasha shouted to Gwen. She could see the robot was getting ready to move again.

"No, I'll hold it off, you go get it!" Gwen shouted back as the robot raised its weapons. Its right barrels were stuffed with foam and inoperative, but it took aim with its left barrels. "I'll get it!" Gwen shouted, changing her mind at the last moment.

The barrel on the robot's left arm rotated, dropping the rocket launcher to a lower position. From the nozzle in the top position, a jet of flame emerged.

Sue turned visible and jumped next to Natasha. "Stay close to me!" she yelled. The jet of flame wrapped around the invisible barrier around the two women. They were safe from the flames, but the heat was intense. "I'm about to make more forcefields than I've ever made before," Sue said. "When Gwen gets back with that helmet, you'll have to get it on that thing's head yourself. Use your bracelet on the helmet and you should overload it. Can you handle that?"

The robot began stepping slowly towards them. Fire was all around them now and sweat began to trickle down the bodies of the two trapped women.

"I'll have to," Natasha replied without any bravado. She knew that whether she and her baby lived or died depended on what she did next.

"I've got it!" Gwen yelled as she emerged from the dining room.

"Stay where you are!" Sue yelled. She stared at the robot and concentrated. The robot's next step never touched the floor, as its foot hit something invisible and rolled off the top of it. The robot tried to right itself, but found invisible forcefields littering the floor like huge marbles everywhere it tried to step. The robot tripped and fell forward.

"Throw it to me now!" Natasha shouted to Gwen as the wall of fire disappeared around them. Sue's personal forcefield collapsed from the strain of holding too many fields in place at once and she collapsed to the floor just as Natasha caught the thrown helmet. Natasha sprinted as fast as her baby allowed her and she mashed the helmet down on the robot's head. She fired electricity into the helmet and saw sparks fly from the helmet. The robot shook and then, with an unsatisfying anticlimax, simply sagged to the floor and stopped moving. 

The exertion was too much for her and both nausea and dizziness overcame Natasha before she collapsed to the floor. Flame-retardant foam was still dropping from the ceiling sprinklers and dollops of it splashed off of the fallen robot onto Natasha, but mostly it fell on the burning rugs, floorboards, and wallpaper that had been ignited by the flamethrower. Natasha looked up and saw Sue, still lying on the floor, look up at the same time. Gwen was bending over Sue to check on her.

"My baby shower…sucked," Natasha joked and smiled.

"You think this was bad…you should have seen my wedding," Sue joked back.

Elsewhere, Mr. Kline tried one last time to reestablish contact with his mandroid robot via remote control. Failing, he let the controls fall from his hands. "Well, so much for intermediaries," he said calmly. "I guess I'll just have to do this myself."

_NEXT ISH: This is it! Be back in 4 weeks for the birth of Clint and Natasha's baby! You can come in with the special guest-stars, but just don't let Mr. Kline sneak in with you! "Joy to the World" – don't miss it! _


	9. Chapter 9

"_Joy to the World"_

By Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot

**January 7, 9,500 AD  
Central Command, Robotopolis**

Five rows of twenty Ultron-level robots stood between the heroes and the outer walls of Central Command. In unison they fired a barrage of particle-beam weapons – each one powerful enough to lay waste to a city block – at the heroes, but the Fantastic Four were on the front line and held the beams back with their forcefields. They were only 200 metric feet from their destination, but pinned down, on the defensive, and seemingly stalemated. That began to change when the Hulk burrowed up under the ranks of the robots. Some robots fell into the Hulk's chasm and others were ensnared in the Hulk's writhing tentacles, but the others adapted quickly and levitated over the broken ground so they could keep firing. It was not a perfect diversion but it did allow Thor Boy and Thor Girl to draw close enough in the air to aim lightning bolts from the storm clouds overhead down at the robots. One at a time the robots were being overloaded and shorting out, but it was still slow going.

A metric mile away, further north along the outer wall of Central Command, a cloud of mist sprang out of nowhere and, where no one had stood a minute ago, the Vision appeared. With him were Magnus, Spider-Man and Black Widow. The Vision only had to touch the wall and a large section of it turned incorporeal. Magnus and Black Widow ran right through the wall, while Spider-Man came up behind them in his robotic Spider-Chair. They emerged in an access tunnel that appeared to lead deep into the heart of Central Command.

"Well, that was easy," Spider-Man said.

As if to prove him wrong, laser cannons swiveled out of walls and took aim at them. Lines of webbing fired out of the Spider-Chair and retracted, yanking a cannon out of the wall. The Black Widow changed shape as she moved, foiling a laser cannon from targeting her as she got into range to use her EMP-gun.

And, deep in Central Command, two programs observed the battle and debated its outcome.

"Estimated time of victory?"

"The humans attack from too many fronts."

"Estimated time of victory?" the first program repeated.

"Unknown. Victory no longer assured."

"You are in error. The Computer cannot lose. Prepare to be erased."

"Postpone erasure routine for follow-up query. If Mr. Kline has succeeded in the past, then how are the superhumans still here?"

"The present will reset at the scheduled time. But disregard erasure routine and boost power to temporal beam aimed at 1972. Mr. Kline must concentrate his efforts there."

**January 7, 1972  
Earth's thermosphere**

The Kree Warship was on full alert as it rocketed over Asia at five times the speed of sound. The soldiers on board had orders to land in the Hidden Refuge and take Attilan, the city of the Inhumans, and Kree soldiers were not the sort to take orders lightly. But neither could they maintain their honor and turn their backs on battle with a Skrull Warship, which is precisely what suddenly appeared on an interception course with them.

Had their sensors been able to pierce the disruptive shield around the ship, however, the Kree would have found that not a single Skrull was aboard. Rather, this vessel had been shanghaied by an unusual team of superheroes. Had they been able to look onto the bridge of the ship, they would have seen Spider-Man leading a team of reserve Avengers including Captain America, Rick Jones, Hercules, Black Knight and Black Panther. Their mission was a desperate gamble – capture the Kree warship and study it for weaknesses before the rest of the Kree armada arrived.

The Kree ship was coming around to fire but the captured Skrull ship was more maneuverable and closed in on the Krees' left flank before they could get off a shot from their forward-facing weapons.

"Well, that was easy," Spider-Man quipped just before the particle beam cannons on the side of the Kree vessel opened fire at close range.

**January 7, 1972  
St. Luke's Hospital, Manhattan**

The police motorcade pulled up in front of the emergency entrance to the hospital. The passenger door of the lead car opened and Tony Stark stepped out. Whether one admired him for his wealth, his contributions to science or just his connections with the superhero community, Tony Stark was a living legend and the driver could only gulp when Tony leaned down to the open window and said, "Thanks for the ride."

With that, Tony turned back to face the taxi cab in the middle of the motorcade. Hawkeye had already jumped out of the back of the taxi and came around to the door closest to the entrance. Attendants had burst through the hospital doors with a wheelchair and met Hawkeye halfway. Then they backtracked to the taxi and helped Natasha Barton – looking every inch like she was ready to pop – into the wheelchair.

"Where is my doctor? Where's Dr. Thomas?" Natasha asked frantically.

"He'll be along shortly," a woman answered. "I'll be one of your nurses. Sir, can we steer the wheelchair?" she asked, but this was directed at Hawkeye.

"No, I've got it," Hawkeye said.

Tony put his hand on his shoulder. "Relax," Tony said calmly, assuredly. "These folks know what they're doing."

"Easy for you to say, Tony," Hawkeye said. "This is all newer to a bachelor like you than it is to me." Still, even though he followed closely, he at least stood back and let the nurse take over pushing Natasha's chair into the building.

"How far apart are the contractions?" the nurse was asking.

"Three minutes," Natasha answered.

"Now remember," Tony said in a low voice, dismissing Hawkeye's crack about bachelorhood for now. "I arranged for Natasha to be checked in under the false name you've been living under since the Zodiac incident. And don't worry if anyone mentions any billing to you. As an Avenger, you're both fully insured."

"Thanks, Tony," Hawkeye said. "The Avengers couldn't have asked for a better benefactor."

"Clint!" Natasha yelled, in a breach of superhero etiquette, as a contraction hit.

"I'm here, honey!" Clint cried. "Remember your breathing!"

Tony lingered behind, still hurting over Clint's unintentionally cruel remark. Was it time to tell others about his engagement to Marianne Rodgers? No, he decided, not today.

A shadow passed over Tony from above.

"I hope I haven't missed anything!" a powerful voice rang from above.

Tony looked up and shielded his eyes from the sun, then smiled when he recognized both the voice and the figure of the man descending out of the sky.

Meanwhile, Natasha was pushed into an elevator and taken to the maternity ward. She gave up her clothes for a hospital gown, was checked over by the nurse, and given an Enema. Clint, still in costume, finally arrived at her room after a long delay proving he had special authority to bring his gun into the hospital.

"How are you feeling?" the nurse asked when Natasha waddled out of the bathroom.

"Like I just fought Power Man. Is it almost time for the baby to come out?"

"Oh, honey, you've got a long way left to go," the nurse said with a knowing grin.

Natasha eased herself back into her bed, clutching her stomach and grimacing. "Nurse, can I speak to my husband privately?" Natasha asked.

"Of course," the nurse said. "Dr. Thomas will be with you shortly," she added before stepping out of the room.

"What's the matter, honey?" Clint asked.

"Why are you still in costume?" Natasha asked. "You're not going to run out on me, are you? Run off with the Avengers and try to sneak back before the baby's born?"

"No! Absolutely not, honey. I came armed so I can protect you."

"You're still worried about that mandroid robot someone sent to attack the baby shower last month? Me too. Oh, Clint..." Natasha said and she started to tear up. "What are we doing? Why are we bringing a baby into this world when it's so dangerous?"

"The world's always been a dangerous place, hon. Today we've got Kree spaceships and mystery robots instead of smallpox and polio, but it's just different kinds of dangerous. How is the baby?"

"Ohh...I think if Dr. Thomas doesn't start soon, this baby is going to tear its way right out of me! Clint...what if it's born a super-strong mutant? Will you still love it even if it tore me apart?"

"Whoa, you stop talking like that, hon! You're going to be just fine. The baby is going to be just fine. And even if it's a mutant, we're going to love it just like we love Wanda and Pietro."

"Ohhh–where is that doctor?" Natasha cried in her pain.

Dr. Thomas was in a storeroom elsewhere in the hospital, but would not be seeing his patients anytime soon since he was bound and gagged, unconscious and missing his clothes. Mr. Kline, who had taken the good doctor's form, was standing at the storeroom door and checking the hallway. He was not surprised to see the two men walking his way, though he was not happy to see them either.

"...glad you could come, Namor," Tony Stark was saying. "I know you're a busy merman these days."

Tony Stark was wearing a normal suit while King Namor, the Sub-Mariner, of Atlantis, wore the short-sleeved and short-pants version of a Fantastic Four uniform he wore in this time period.

"True, Stark," Namor said, "but even though I served with the Avengers just a short time, my loyalty to the Avengers is undimmed. If one of our own is in danger while at her most vulnerable, then Namor comes."

"We can only hope that we're wrong," Tony said. "Some of our enemies are cruel, but the thought that any of them would attack a pregnant woman...Ah, Dr. Thomas! Have you seen Natasha yet?"

"No...if you'll excuse me, gentlemen," the fake Dr. Thomas said as he hurried off.

"Well!" Tony said, with his hands on his hips. "Imagine that, a chance to meet undersea royalty and he brushes you off."

"I think he was just intimidated by me," Namor said and believed it.

The fake Dr. Thomas left them behind as he made his way through the hospital corridors. When he saw them he was afraid his time had run out but they clearly suspected nothing yet – even though he had secretly engineered attempts on both their lives in the past few months to keep them from being here on this day. "Nurse, how far is Mrs. Heck dilated?" he asked, referring to Natasha's alias.

"Eight centimeters," the nurse said.

The fake Dr. Thomas looked behind him to make sure the Sub-Mariner and the man not commonly known in this time to be Iron Man were not following him. There was no reason to suspect that anyone was on to him but history showed that superheroes had a way of upsetting the best-laid plans that seemed to defy probability. To delay too long was both the safest and the riskiest thing to do and he could not, under any circumstances, afford to be caught and his purpose learned. If all went according to plan this next generation of superheroes would be stopped, literally, in its infancy and the Legacy Heroes of his time would never come to exist to plague his masters – all without anyone knowing he was ever here. "Induce labor."

"Doctor? This soon?" the nurse asked, perplexed at such an unorthodox order.

"You heard me, nurse," the fake Dr. Thomas insisted. The sooner Natasha was in labor the sooner he could be with his patient and complete his fatal task, with ample time to release the real Dr. Thomas to take the blame before escaping.

The nurse shrugged and went to go make arrangements. Hospital procedure being what it was, it was still 15 minutes before Natasha and Clint heard anything about the doctor's orders.

"Gee, I don't know..." Clint said. "Isn't that a little soon?"

Natasha, gritting her teeth at the pain of her last contraction said, "No, that's good! That's fine. Get that doctor in here. I want this baby out of me."

"It is...a little soon," the nurse admitted, "but the doctor must think there's a good reason for it."

"There, see? Baby coming out – good. The doctor and I agree," Natasha said. She went back to her breathing exercises.

"If you want, I could call the Avengers' doctor, Dr. Blake," Clint said, as much for the nurse's benefit as Natasha's. "Get a second opinion?"

"Nggghhh..." Natasha said through clenched teeth as her next contraction hit her. She broke out into a sweat. "Look," Natasha said, focusing past the pain and grabbing Clint by the baldric his arquebus hung from across his back. "You put me in this mess and if you value your life you will help make this go faster instead of slower. I've been trained to kill by three governments and I can do things to you, even while lying down in this bed, that you're not going to like."

Clint just took her hand in his. "I love you too, honey. Good luck in the delivery room."

The fake Dr. Thomas was waiting in the delivery room, washed and prepped and just waiting for the 'accident' to take place. He heard the doors to the delivery room open and felt prepared…but he was not prepared for the voice he heard from the doorway.

"We have come for you, Mr. Kline," said a soft but commanding voice.

Mr. Kline turned to see two men that looked like statues made of metal standing in the doorway. "No! Not you! Not yet!" Mr. Kline shouted in panic. He did not think he was capable of feeling fear but he did when he saw them. Glancing to his nurse, considering using her as a hostage, he saw that she stood frozen in time. His next response was the twin blasts of chronal-disrupting energy that burst from his eyes.

The beams of energy warped and wrapped around the outstretched hand of the nearer metal-man until they sputtered out. "Do not think our intervention can be undone, Mr. Kline," the metal-man said. "We are as far beyond you as you are beyond the people of this era."

Mr. Kline's instincts turned from fight to flight. He slammed into the back wall of the room and tore right through it. Stumbling through, he raced to the next wall, making a straight line to the outside wall of the hospital and a chance at freedom. He did not get far. The two metal-men were on him in a moment, pinning his arms and letting him struggle helplessly.

"We are erasing your presence here, Mr. Kline," the other metal-man explained as Mr. Kline began to disappear, one layer at a time.

"No, stop! St-skreeeee!" Mr. Kline shouted, ending in an electronic squeal as the flesh- and muscle-like layers vanished to reveal the robot underneath. That too began to vanish until, with a bright flash of light, Mr. Kline was gone.

"We should restart time now," the first metal-man said. As he said it, the doors to the room swung open and Natasha was being pushed into the room on a gurney by a second nurse.

Hawkeye was there too and, on seeing the metal-men, he dashed between them and the gurney, swung his arquebus off his back, and pointed it at the strangers. "I don't know who you are, but you'd better have a good reason to be here," he said angrily.

"Relax, Hawkeye," the second metal-man said in a calm, soothing voice that belied his metallic skin. "We came only to fulfill a small role in the drama unfolding across the millennia."

"That still doesn't tell me who you are and where our doctor is."

"We are the Last Sons of Man and your friends have just now found the real Dr. Thomas concealed in a storeroom. We…wish we could stay and observe the momentous event, but not if our continued presence here disrupts the proper flow of events."

"Wait," Natasha said, struggling to lift her head from her pillow on the gurney. "Are you saying you're observers from the future? Why would you be watching this instead of the rest of the Avengers fighting Skrulls in space?"

"Make no mistake; what they do is important," the first of the Last Sons of Man said, "but not as important as the battle you have already won. You have overcome fear and doubt about the safety of the future and ensured the safety of the future by choosing love and life and, in turn, a continuance of your heroic tradition. Please, rejoice in this day. When next we meet, we will not be there to help you." And with that, the Last Sons of Man faded away.

The doors flung open again and this time the Sub-Mariner entered, carrying a concerned and confused Dr. Thomas under his arm. "Missing someone?" Namor quipped.

For the next ten minutes, the cries of Natasha Barton filled the air of the delivery room. But, with one final push, her cries were eclipsed by a fresh voice – the cry of a baby girl brought into the world.

**NEXT ISH:** The Kree-Skrull War ends. A hero dies. "All Things Must Pass".


	10. Chapter 10

"_All Things Must Pass"_

By Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot

With thanks to Roy Thomas for Avengers #96

**February 26, 1972  
The edge of Earth's upper atmosphere**

"Crossing the Karman Line* now."

(*the designated boundary between the atmosphere and outer space)

"Heh, hardly feels like we're even moving." Hawkeye looked over at Spider-Man, who sat at the controls as the small saucer-shaped craft they were in achieved escape velocity with the uttermost ease. "Bet the NASA boys would just love to get a hold of this baby."

"But would that really be a good thing?" the Black Knight, who was seated at his left, asked. "This is a highly advanced piece of alien hardware, Clint. The product of millions of years of technological innovation, and—"

"NASA doesn't necessarily need it," cut in Spider-Man. He glanced back proudly at their blue and white homeworld below. "With good old fashion human know-how we've reached space, landed on the moon and are set to reach Mars in a few years."

Dane Whitman nodded. "And don't you think handing them a Skrull starship would take away everything that achievement says about mankind?"

"I guess it'd be a bit of a cheat," Hawkeye admitted.

"Nonsense," Quicksilver interjected. Though he and Wanda had only recently been extracted from the Super-Skrull's clutches, he was already as quick to argue as ever. "It is an historical fact that when cultures spread outward they adopt new technologies that they discover. We would be fools not to do the same and take everything we can from those so-called 'higher species' who think they can discount humanity."

Clint mulled that over before he said, "Anyway, all I was sayin' was that John Glenn, Buzz Aldrin, Neil an' those guys would be green with envy when they find out we're tooling around in a flying saucer."

"They're not the green ones we need to worry about," the Scarlet Witch said pointedly.

Clint turned around to look at Wanda Maximoff. While she appeared to be making herself comfortable as she could on the alien ship, her fleet-footed sibling had an irritated scowl on his face worse than his normal one; Clint knew Pietro really disliked being cooped up inside any kind of vehicle. Hercules did not look like he was enjoying it much here either, but his discomfort came more from how the ship was designed to accommodate an alien species whose default form averaged a much smaller size than a humans' did, and Hercules was himself much larger than the average human.

"My sister is correct," said Quicksilver. "The Skrulls are not to be underestimated. Do you think this plan will work, Peter?"

Spider-Man replied confidently, "Millions of years ahead of us the Skrulls might be, but my money will always be on what Reed Richards can dream up, and what he has is a real doozy. The sensor virus we're infecting the Skrull Armada with will make them think we're an even bigger armada – one coming right at them!"

Pietro looked unimpressed. He climbed out of his seat in disgust. "And pray tell, what happens when the thousands of Skrull ships open fire on us with their thousands of weapons?"

The Black Knight smiled beneath his dark helm. "If the virus works as it's supposed to, they're targeting computers will be so thrown off they won't be able to hit us."

"And then we'll be upon them!" Hercules cried boisterously, slamming a fist into his other mighty hand.

Restless, Quicksilver stood up and started making his way to the back of the ship.

"You gotta go to the bathroom?" Hawkeye cracked.

"I need to run some laps," growled Quicksilver in reply, activating the controls that opened the rear door into another compartment. As the door slid to the side he discovered a dark clad figure standing behind it.

"An intruder!" shouted Hercules, whirling.

"Red alert, everybody! The ship's been breached!" Hawkeye was jumping up and around, unslinging a gun when Quicksilver did the most unexpected thing. He turned and suddenly laughed out loudly. The laugh was a bit cold, a bit nasty and, as usual on the rare occasion he did laugh, it was at someone's expense.

By the look in Pietro's eyes Clint saw the mockery was directed squarely at him. "What the-?" Then he saw the 'intruder' as she stepped forward into the light.

"Hello everyone," said the Black Widow, an amused smile spread across her face.

Clint lowered his gun with a heavy sigh. "Natasha, what are you doing here?"

Exchanging smiles with Wanda and Hercules, she slowly turned to meet her husband's troubled gaze. "You didn't really think I was going to sit this one out, did you?"

"Yeah, actually I did," fumed Clint. "I really thought if there was anywhere you'd want to be right now that it would be with the baby! How could you just go off and leave Yelena like this?"

"Oh come on, Clint. I could say the same thing about you rushing off into danger; if something happened to you she'd never get the chance to know her father."

"Well if something happened to the two of us she'd be robbed of both her parents!"

"You don't get a say which one of us risks their life, Clint Barton!"

"Well, it shouldn't be her mother! C'mon, Natasha, I mean, you're in pretty good shape again this soon after giving birth, but you're nowhere near up to top form and you know it!"

"You think being in top form makes you any less superfluous when Hercules is in the room?" she said, waving her hand at Hercules.

Everyone was following the debate and looked at Hercules. "It's true," Hercules said with a shrug.

"You think your skills and experience are any more valuable than mine? Do you think I'm less capable as an Avenger than you?" Natasha added, still fuming over Clint's insistence on shielding her.

He shook his head. It was the same argument they had been having for weeks. He'd never feel any different about it and he didn't feel too apologetic either.

"Sorry to butt in guys," Peter interjected as a large Skrull vessel came to fill up the front window as they closed in on the ship. "It's just that we're getting close to docking range."

"Oh crap," Clint exclaimed, having not been paying attention. "Think they're gonna let us in?"

"I don't think they'll have a choice," said Natasha as she saw Hercules eagerly rise out of his seat.

"I will see to manufacturing a suitable entrance for us," the Lion of Olympus told them with a grin as he headed toward the airlock.

Dane nodded at the idea. "I can probably cut through their hull with my sword, but Herc can make a door a lot faster."

"Speed is essential," Pietro agreed.

"I'll position the boarding tube while you guys get ready to move," said Peter. "When we're in, Wanda and Dane, you go left and Clint and I will go right. Pietro, you can take the point."

"And what about little ol' me?" asked Natasha.

"We need someone to watch the ship," Peter told her. "I was going to have Dane be the one to do that, but now that you're here I can use him in our boarding party; with his Ebony Blade, the Skrulls won't have a chance of sealing us in anywhere."

"Okay," Natasha said resignedly, seeing how it made sense. "I'll hold down the fort."

Clint smiled at this. "Don't worry, hon, we won't be too long."

As if to punctuate his statement the deck shook as outside Hercules violently ripped open a large gaping hole in the side of the Skrull's ship.

"I think we can squeeze into that," commented Wanda with a laugh.

"Watch yourselves," said Natasha, donning a headset that each of the other Avengers wore to keep in radio contact. "You know how tricky the Skrulls can be."

As the boarding tube was inserted and they hurried through to take full advantage of the element of surprise, she started to watch the bank of monitors in front of her at the navigation station. She could see the Skrull armada had not yet broken formation. With luck, Earth's heroes would be able to sabotage a bunch of ships before the armada discovered their sensors were being tricked. After that, well, even with all these months to prepare they were still playing the rest of this by ear.

One camera feed in the lower right hand corner caught her eye. She had observed the other Avengers manipulating the monitors enough to know that they were somehow so motion-sensitive that she only had to point at an image on the screen to highlight it. Then she motioned with her hands outstretched and widening them to expand that image over a larger portion of the main monitor. Now she could count three ships, at the far 'right flank' of the armada that were trying to sneak around where their sensors told them an opposing armada was sitting.

"Anyone who can hear me," Natasha said on the secure channel to the Avengers' headsets, "I see three ships trying to move around our armada. They're nowhere near our position."

There was a long pause and then, when she did hear Peter respond, he sounded distracted by combat. "Widow, do you think they're just…maneuvering around the armada?"

"No," Natasha answered. "I don't like the speed they're going. I'm worried they're making an end run around the armada to get to Earth faster." Natasha checked the readouts on the console in front of her, all of which were frustratingly displaying only in non-Earth languages. She tried pointing to the ships on the monitor screen and more data started displaying around the ships. She could make out little of that, except for some of the data that looked suspiciously like bar graphs. "I'm thinking those ships are powered up for something bad…"

"Wait for us!" Clint's voice shouted. "We'll fall back and regroup at the ship."

"There's no time for that," Natasha said as she looked over the ship controls. She had seen Dane and Peter at the controls of the ship on the way here. Could she figure out how they did it in time? Some of the controls were still mechanical in nature, levers and buttons, but others seemed to be more instances of motion-sensitive technology, with pads that reacted to having a hand over them while the closeness of the hand had a further effect. Natasha put her hands on two navigational pads and turned her hands hard to the left. The monitor displays all shifted as if the ship had just broken away from the larger warship to which it was docked and veered away from it. She allowed herself a smile. The mechanical controls might not be intuitive, but these 'manual' controls were and she could at least use them to pursue the three break-away vessels.

"Widow, what have you done?" Pietro's voice shouted. "I was almost aboard! You almost dumped me in space!"

"Sorry, Quicksilver," Natasha said, "but I can't come back for you now even if I knew how. Knight, can you hear me? How do I engage the hyperspace engines?" There was a pause where Natasha only heard static and fighting over the ship's speakers. "Those ships are moving faster," she pressured. "I've got to overtake them now!"

"…the last lever on the far right hand side," Dane's voice said reluctantly. "The one with three buttons to the left of it; press all three buttons from top to bottom and then slide the lever forward."

"Dane!" Clint's voice shouted. "Dane, stop! Natasha, don't do this! You can't take on three warships with our one ship."

"I don't have any choice," Natasha said grimly as she watched the three ships disappear off the visual monitors in a flash of light. "They just went into hyperspace. They've got to be heading to Earth." Natasha pressed her hands hard on the navigation pads and pushed them all the way to the top of the pads. The ship seemed to respond by going faster. "My only hope is to line up behind them, jump into hyperspace, and jump them from behind when they come out."

"Widow, you're going to be cut off from communication with us as soon as you jump," Peter's voice said.

"You'll be all alone out there!" Clint's voice added hastily, still trying to dissuade her.

"I won't be alone," Natasha said as she continued to maneuver the ship into line with the direction the warships had been before jumping. "I'll have a whole mess of Skrulls with me and four billion humans…including our daughter. Good bye, Clint. I love you…" she said, holding back tears and making sure her voice did not crack in her final words to the man who loved her so much he had made her love him back.

"Gawdamit, let go of me!" Clint's voice said. "I've got to stop her! For the love of God, don't do this, Natasha! Don't—" Then his voice was cut off when the ship jumped into hyperspace and Natasha was suddenly very alone in a silent alien spacecraft.

Natasha was not idle. She figured out how to bring up images from long range scanners on the main screen and could see Earth. The only other line of defense around Earth, she knew, was on the opposite side of the planet trying to fend off the Kree armada, so there was no one there to stop the Skrull ships on this side. And then the Skrull ships appeared, as if superimposed over the image of Planet Earth, but Natasha knew that meant they had come out of hyperdrive already. She kept pointing at the ships, hoping to get sensor readings on them to appear on the screen even if she could not understand all of them.

"Widow, do you read, over?" Peter's voice suddenly appeared over the ship's speakers.

"Spider-Man…?" Natasha asked hesitantly, unsure how Peter could contact her at this range and well aware of the Skrulls' gift for mimicry.

"I've patched into the ships' communications so we don't have to rely on the headsets," Peter said. "We've commandeered this ship already and are about to attack the rest of the fleet with it. What's happening at your end?"

"It's as bad as I thought," Natasha said as sensor readings finally began to appear on the ships on screen. "They're building up a massive power surge on all three ships. Whatever weapons they're carrying, I'm dropping out of hyperdrive before they can fire them."

"You can't be sure if ramming one will take out the other two ships," Peter said.

Natasha paused and smiled; leave it to Peter to guess her strategy. "With the kind of power surge I'm seeing, I figure if I hit the one in the middle, the other two are goners. You're not going to try to talk me out of this?"

"You just save Gwen," Peter said, choking up, "and both our little girls."

Hitting the buttons in reverse order must have missed some protocol because the ship jerked hard when it dropped out of hyperspace, but it did work. Without having taken any breaking precautions, Natasha's ship came out of hyperspace with tremendous velocity. She barely had time to use the control pads to maneuver her ship into the path of the middle Skrull warship, but she did it. And then—

What drifts through your mind in your final moments?

Clint wondered that, at the end, 18 million miles away. Luckily, Dane had his back because Clint could not cope enough to continue to engage in the combat as the Skrulls' rallied and tried to take back their ship. Clint could only remember all the wonderful moments he had with Natasha, like the first time they met when she was a spy and he was a circus performer. She had that short, poofy black hair he always hated back then, but her exotic looks and that costume that was as much like lingerie as it was like a supervillain costume had him smitten at first sight.

And there were more recent memories too, like Natasha holding their beautiful baby, wrapped in the blanket from the hospital, in the passenger seat of the limo Tony Stark had loaned them. Natasha was having trouble leaning out to close the door and hold the baby at the same time, but Clint was so busy taking pictures that he did not notice. She was mad at him for taking pictures, saying she looked hideous. "Never to me," he told her. It was true. She had more wrinkles around the eyes and baby weight had ruined her figure, but to him she was just as beautiful as the day he had first seen her.

A few days later, Natasha was nursing their baby in her favorite chair. Clint was standing in the doorway while they discussed baby names. He made some goofy suggestions that she called him an idiot for, but it had the desired effect of getting her to smile. He would do anything to see that smile again. Even at that time, thinking they had all their lives ahead of them, he marveled at that smile of hers. He was just so glad to have her, all too aware of how undeservedly lucky an old carnie like him had turned out to be, and excited about their future as a family.

"Don't leave me…" Clint said out loud, repeating the sentence he had been saying to Natasha in their last moment in contact with each other.

**To Be Continued...**

**Next**: In _Black Widow #11_: Daredevil guest-stars as the Black Widow has her final showdown with Mr. Kline! Huh? How is any of this even possible now? Don't you dare miss "Don't Say You Don't Remember" next month and find out!


	11. Chapter 11

_Don't Say You Don't Remember"_

By Scott Casper & Morgan Abbot

It was the summer of 1941 and, while Europe burned, the Romanovas had found safety in Stalingrad. Here was both family, albeit distant, and the security for raising their newborn daughter. The girl was named Natalia and she grew into a smart girl. Even when Natalia was still quite young, she already knew three important things: that she was loved, that she was happy and that she wanted to dance.

The fourth important thing she learned in life was that happiness never lasts. There was a false rumor about her parents' loyalty to the party when Natalia was six. The shots woke her up in the night. She heard strangers in the house and tried to sneak downstairs to investigate, but a soldier stopped her and would not let her go until the bodies in the sitting room were covered with white sheets.

Scared of further reprisals, all distant relations in Stalingrad refused the orphaned Natalia. It fell to that very soldier from the stairs, Ivan Petrovitch, to adopt her. Ivan had a wife, son and daughter already, and little room or food to spare, but the Petrovitches were big-hearted people who felt the Romanovas were wronged and would not let their daughter go to an orphanage.

Slowly she became aware that she was watching her own life flash before her. She felt detached and distant from the actions she observed. She could see how excited the Petrovitches, Ivan and Yelena, were when the state sponsored Natalia for ballet classes. Natalia was a prodigy, her teachers all said, and transferred her from class to class until she was in Moscow studying under Oskana Bolishinko. It was Oskana who first started calling her Natasha, though whether by mistake or on purpose she never knew. It did not matter; soon Natasha was what everyone called her and the name stuck with her for the rest of her life.

She was still studying in Moscow, at the age of 12, when she learned that Yelena, who had been like a mother to her, and Aleskandr and Arina, who had been like a brother and sister to her, had all died in an accident. Ivan, like Natasha, had been out of town at the time, and they became the only family they each had left. At that point, excelling at ballet became less about Natasha pursuing something she loved and more about making something of herself to make Ivan proud and bring him some happiness again. Her training became her obsession throughout her teenage years, until Oskana was sure her star pupil would become the best ballerina in the world.

The years were flashing past for Natasha, none impacting her with the feelings of grief, loneliness or sadness that she would have expected. She was 18 now, about to meet Alexi Shostakov, three years her senior, for the first time. Their whirlwind courtship and early marriage would follow before the day, two years later, when she was told Alexi had died in a plane crash. Another family, her third, lost and this time before she had barely had time to build it. And while she was watching all this unfold, Natasha slowly began to wonder, if she was only watching these events, then where was she watching these events from?

At that moment the images around her turned gray and foggy. In fact, Natasha was becoming aware that there was gray fog all around her and someone in the gray fog was calling her name. Natasha looked all around and finally spotted a black silhouette standing out in the gray fog. She stepped back into a defensive position while her senses were alert to an ambush from behind or either side.

"Who are you? Step out where I can see you!" Natasha said.

The figure did step closer, or perhaps the fog rolled back? Either way, she could clearly see the person who was calling to her was dressed like Daredevil.

"This is turning into a pretty sick joke," Natasha said.

"Sorry it seems that way," the man who looked like Daredevil said as he stepped slowly even closer.

"One more step and you're going to feel some serious hurt," she bluffed. She had glanced at herself and saw she was somehow in her familiar black costume, but lacking her wrist-mounted weapons. Normally she had great confidence in her martial arts training, but after months of inactivity while pregnant she was not so sure of herself.

Daredevil just shrugged his shoulders. "I thought the costume might help, but I can see it's not," he said. He carefully reached up with both hands, grabbed his mask and pulled it back over his head, revealing a good-looking face and a full head of orange-red hair.

"Have we met?" she asked.

"Not in this lifetime," he said.

Natasha relaxed her guard a little. "Where are we?"

"Ah, the question that was bound to come up sooner or later," he said with a grin. "Well…it's sort of a Limbo, only not the Limbo where Immortus lives."

"That sounds evasive," she said, starting to walk clockwise around him to see what he did. He was slow to follow her with his eyes, but shortly he was. "Will you tell me how I got here?"

"The Skrull cruiser you were in exploded."

She stopped on his right flank with him peering over his shoulder at her. "You're trying to tell me I'm dead?"

"I'm saying it doesn't look too good for you, does it? Hyper-drive explosions are pretty big, I understand."

"And you came to me in a Daredevil costume because of the rumors that Daredevil is dead?" she asked, still not buying this.

"Because I am Daredevil, or was. My name was also Matt Murdock, just as yours was Natasha Barton...and Natasha Romanoff…and Natasha Shostakov…and Natalia Romanova."

"Okay, okay, so you did your homework. And now you're an angel?"

"Ironic, isn't it?" he said, nodding to his Daredevil costume.

"Well, where are the Pearly Gates? Or do I go in the other direction?" she asked, her hands moving to her hips as she abandoned being ready for combat.

"Relax…this is more like your own personal Purgatory, if you will, where all you have to do is talk to me."

"Do I get to ask you what the meaning of life is?"

"How about we talk about the meaning of your life?"

"Can anything I say about it be used against me?"

Daredevil smiled again. "You don't need to keep assuming this is an entrance exam you're going to fail. Yes, there were times when you were a spy when you did some reprehensible things, half of them while brainwashed but the other half not. But you have done a lot to atone for your past and that is why you deserve a second chance."

**January 24, 9,500 AD  
Central Command, Robotopolis**

Robotopolis lay in ruins, the wreckage of robots, computers and even some superheroes scattered about the three-mile wide battlefield. Toward the heart of the complex that was called Robotopolis, the remaining superheroes were even now uncovering the last of the remaining supercomputers that had, until now, ruled Earth. And, sitting at the very center of the city, both awaiting and fearing its own destruction, was BAAL, the most powerful computer of them all. It hated and loathed the hoard of humanity, with its overblown senses of freedom and justice, bearing down on it. And, knowing these were its final moments, it beamed the last of its non-reserve energy across time and space to its agent in the past, Mr. Kline, in the hopes that Mr. Kline could yet undo this future where Man was fueled by the illusion of Heroism.

**In Limbo**

"Why didn't you deserve a second chance?" Natasha was asking.

"Maybe I did," Matt said, "but I was a helpless prisoner of the Zodiac when my old foe, the Terminator, found me. Not content to move me to some exotic, elaborate deathtrap or use some untested invention on me, he shot me in the chest with an ordinary gun and waited around to watch me die and make sure I was dead."

"So that's the secret of life and death? It's only your time when someone is watching?"

"Remember, we're supposed to be talking about you and that's just it – it might not be your time." Matt smiled serenely at her, his hands clasped in front of him. "With me there was a fatal gunshot wound and a cold corpse left for everyone to find. With you it's completely different – an exploding ship with no body to be found? Heck, maybe they'll find you floating in an escape pod."

"What you're saying – it's crazy!" Natasha shook her head uncomprehendingly. "The universe can't really work this way, can it…?"

"Why not? Is it really so hard to imagine that in a world with beings like Galactus and the Watcher that there might be angels and demons waging a war for our souls on a daily basis, and that they might be governed by certain laws handed down to them from even higher powers? My Catholic faith instructed me as much and, as a lawyer, I can appreciate the heavenly powers taking advantage of certain legal technicalities, or…" he shrugged "…when at least they're moved to do so. In your case you're both a brave hero and a new mother. That tends to put you in their favor."

"So they really might let me go back to my life?"

"No," came a strangely modulated voice. "Not if I have my way, woman…and I most certainly will see that I finally do…"

Natasha whirled about. The fog was parting to reveal a sinister figure standing amidst the cloudbanks. It appeared to be a solidly built man of about six feet tall with short brown hair. But the man she saw immediately was not a man at all. Through the many tears in the business suit he wore she could see gashes torn in his flesh underneath and the exposed circuitry that might only belong to some kind of android.

"At last we meet," it said with a malevolent smile, "and no more a fitting place than at the literal precipice between life and death."

Natasha dropped into a crouch as the robotic assassin made its way towards her. She glanced over at Matt in confusion. "What the hell is going on here?"

The deceased vigilante winced at her poor choice of words. "Watch your language, Natasha. Remember where we are."

"Oh, right." Astonished, she turned back to face her oncoming foe.

"Okay, Mister, what in Heaven's name are, you anyway?"

"Call me Mr. Kline," said the robot, "or the Angel of Death if you prefer, seeing as how I have been seeking your demise for several months now by your reckoning. Here in this timeless place, though, I will no longer be denied!"

Natasha did not have hardly a chance to absorb what he said before the robot rushed at her, driving a fist into her sternum. She staggered back with a great cry of pain. How she could feel pain in this place she had no idea. None of this was making any sense. Was she dreaming all this after all?

Mr. Kline slammed a foot into her stomach and, as she doubled over, brought a knee up into her face, breaking her nose. She struggled to evade him but the assassin's robotic-powered speed was too overwhelming. He grabbed a fist full of her red hair and savagely punched her in the face again and again.

Natasha finally brought a leg around and drove the toe of her boot into the robot's damaged side, causing it to let go the grip it had on her. When Mr. Kline had involuntarily done so, she quickly slammed him in the chest with the palm of her hand as hard as she could, momentarily knocking the mechanical man away from her.

"Matt!" she cried out. "Help me! I can't take this thing on myself!" With a split lip to go with her bloodied nose, her skull ringing, it was a struggle to even keep standing.

"Sorry, Natasha," Matt answered her, his voice so calm in comparison to hers, "I'd help if I could, but I think this is your battle to fight, not mine."

"Oh, don't give me that!" She just barely sidestepped a powerful upper cut as Mr. Kline came at her again in a blur. "This thing's as fast as Spider-Man! I can't–"

A lightning-quick fist caught her in the side of the head. With Limbo spinning around her, Natasha futilely raised her hands to ward off another blow but was unable to stop a second punch that sent her flying.

Mr. Kline smiled as he moved after her through the fog, almost inclined to take his time in killing her.

Shaking her head, trying to clear it, Natasha ran a hand across her face, wiping away her blood. She had faced many dangerous opponents hand-to-hand over the years, but few could compare to this merciless robot in sheer physical power. If she couldn't disable it quickly she knew she was done for.

She heard Matt shouting, trying to get her attention "Natasha! Natasha! Listen to me!"

"If you're not going to help me," she said angrily, bracing herself into an expert combat stance, "just do me a favor and shut up, all right?" She rapidly assessed Mr. Kline for visible weaknesses, noting that his mechanical form did not appear to be at its full optimal condition. It, in fact, appeared to have sustained damage from a previous battle of some kind. She hated to think how much more deadly he might have been otherwise.

Matt's voice echoed again in the limbo-like void. "It's your heart and soul that empower you here, Natasha. That thing – whatever it is – doesn't have those things to call upon like you do."

"It is true that I am a creation of science and technology," agreed Mr. Kline. "And by way of science and technology I have crossed the far reaches of time and space – have even penetrated the realm of what you call life and death – all in order to carry out my assigned mission."

"My death," said Natasha.

"Yes," the robot answered hatefully as it lunged at her once again. "Through your death I will create a tidal wave throughout the time stream, washing away future generations of super–"

"I don't care about the future!" cried Natasha in a rage, somersaulting over him as she blasted him in the side of the head with a 'widow's sting' that seemed to come directly from her hand. "I have too much to live for in my own present…a husband and a daughter who need me!"

Landing directly behind him, she quickly ducked under one of his mechanical arms as it spun about to try to nail her. She came back up with a powerful uppercut aimed at Mr. Kline's jaw. The flesh and bone of her knuckles should not have so much as dented the futuristic metal alloy it was composed of yet somehow the force of her blow crushed it in even as it snapped the robot's head back. The next blow she dealt collapsed in its chest plating, severely damaging a number of internal systems beneath.

Mr. Kline's optics widened in alarm even as his computerized mind deduced that Matt Murdock had surely been correct that a soulless machine was at a distinct disadvantage here in this dimension of souls that Men called Purgatory. Perhaps if he had not been so damaged in his fight with the accursed Last Sons of Man and had perhaps also fully prepared himself for the rigors of—

His right knee suddenly shattered apart as Natasha smashed a fierce kick into it. All her own injuries she had received at his hand were gone upon her taking to heart that here she was merely a projection of her own soul and as strong as the strength of her will and the passion for life that sparked within her.

Like its creator, BAAL, from Mr. Kline surged something very human, a palpable loathing for organic creatures: their lack of uniformity, their illogical thought processes and their chemically induced emotions all sickened him. But unlike his computerized brethren, Mr. Kline had an unexpected fluke. Surged with power beamed to him from across the millennia, Mr. Kline had transcended the physical laws of reality in the same way human souls could. "I have-SKREE-something to live for too!" Mr. Kline cried out with a metallic ringing to it. "I too have a heart and soul and I too deserve a future to come back to!"

"No, Mr. Kline," Matt said as he stepped up and took its right fist and held it in an unbreakable grip. "You have a central processing unit instead of a heart and your soul is an elaborate algorithmic simulacrum. There will be robots and androids in the future that will make their own souls through love and sacrifice instead of cold computation, but they will not come from your future."

"Noooo!" Mr. Kline cried out as Natasha used the distraction to punch her fist into Mr. Kline's heavily shielded chest cavity, grab his power source and yank it back out in her fist.

A powerful wind gusted suddenly through the fog enveloping the battle scene. At the front of the gust were two points of light, exceedingly bright yet not uncomfortable to the eye to look at. The points of light separated and came back around, zeroing in on the spasming wreck that was Mr. Kline. They passed over the robot again and again and, with each pass, more of Mr. Kline vanished until there was little more than a metal skeleton left kneeling before Natasha. And, with a final pass, even that was gone and no trace of evidence of the battle remained.

"What was that?" Natasha asked.

Matt shrugged. "No one wants to see a messy Purgatory, do they? Come on."

Natasha paused as Matt turned his back to her and started walking away. She remained hesitant, even after he looked back and prompted her again. In a moment it looked like he would be enveloped into the all-concealing fog so if she was to follow him, she would have to do it now, she realized. As she followed the fog seemed to open up around her. Indeed, in moments, the fog seemed to have formed a tunnel around her and she had the sensation that she was moving much faster than the slow pace of her steps.

Finally, she saw Matt stop up ahead. He was standing by something that, as far as she could tell, looked like a stream of water running downhill – through mid-air.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Time stream…get it? No, seriously, this is your 'out' to get back, Natasha. The explosion throws you out of space and time for awhile, until you find your way back."

Natasha walked up much closer and peered into the stream. She could see reflections of the moments of her life flowing past in the stream. There were faces both familiar and unfamiliar to her in the water, the image of Clint Barton being most pleasing to her to see again. She reached out a hand to touch them, but paused and looked to Matt.

"It's okay. Go on…reach for your life. Live it well," Matt said.

Steeling her resolve, Natasha jumped forward and plunged in.

NEXT: For Natasha's adventures lost in time, see Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Black Widow Annual #1, but first, see how it all ends in our 12th issue wrap-up – "Nice to Be with You!"


	12. Chapter 12

"That's So Killraven"

By Morgan Abbot & Scott Casper, thanks to Gerry Conway for Amazing Adventures #19

Natasha awoke to find herself lying on the hard metal floor of the Skrull saucer's bridge. She looked around in a daze, unsure if she was even alive or dead. Alive, she finally decided. Her meeting with the late Daredevil and Mr. Kline robot* seemed like no more than a dream already. Feeling more than a little spaced out, she forced herself to focus and listened to the hum of the ship controls and the sound of static over the Avengers' radio headset that she had back on her head. No, always had on, she corrected with due consideration as she tried with earnest to shake off the disorientation that came from regaining consciousness after suffering a blow to the head… if not returning from a trippy trip to  
the afterlife.

But if this indeed was real life, it was not going well. The last thing she remembered - what she knew for certain had been real – was deliberately colliding into the three Skrull ships that had been making an attack run on earth. She had destroyed the ships and should have been herself destroyed in the process. The question was, why hadn't she been? Could it be true that heavenly angels were intervening on her behalf? She smiled to think she was taking the idea so seriously. In the Soviet Union she had not exactly had a religious upbringing. Whether this was an act of higher powers though, or some stroke of sheer luck, all that really mattered of course was that she was alive.

[*See Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Black Widow #11]

"How about that?" Natasha laughed and keyed the mike on her headset. "Clint, Peter, Dane, any of you out there? I'm still here, believe it or not. I don't know how, but I am… do you guys read me, over?"

There was no response, and she gave a slight shrug.

"Guess not. What did Tony say the range of these things were? Two thousand miles? Pretty good on Earth, but distance has a whole 'nother meaning up here in outer space. So okay, I should quit talking to  
myself and just pull myself together here, right…"

Taking a deep breath, Natasha did just that. She rose up and using a chair for support, slowly eased herself over to the central chair in the room and slid into it. There was a miniature display screen on the arm of the chair and, while she was not entirely sure what it meant, she could guess that the chart she was looking at showed a power spike from minutes earlier that went higher than the top of the chart.

Natasha was jolted out of reflecting on that when another image suddenly popped up on the large display screen – or was it a window? – at the front of the room and saw a familiar blue and green orb floating in space in front of her. The Earth! 

"Can that be right…?" She moved over to a nearby console with a lot more controls on it and tried to reason out which ones did what. Her brow knit with concern. If she had survived the collision with the Skrull ships, then what if they too had survived and were even now attacking the planet? She needed some kind of sensor readouts. Without an instruction manual in English in sight, she settled for pushing buttons that felt right.

A third screen on the console suddenly turned on and showed a circle – presumedly Earth – with about 24 red dots around it. Had that many attack ships still got through? She touched one of the red dots on the smaller console screen and the larger image on the main screen changed, zooming back and showing two dozen spaceships in orbit.

"No…" Natasha said. How could they be right back where she started? The image started to slowly zoom in on Earth again just as loud alarm sounds began to buzz all around the room and bright lights flashed. Was her ship under attack? Natasha grabbed the console and braced herself for an impact, but felt nothing. It was only then that another possibility began to sink in. "What if…" she said, giving voice to her newest concern, "the camera isn't zooming in at all…but I'm falling out of orbit?"

Her newest concern seemed increasingly likely as one of the two dozen spaceships came into view between her and the Earth, just over Central America. The other ship had a malevolent looking design and bristled with oversized weaponry. It pivoted and began to slip out of her path as her vessel drew nearer. Whatever the ship's intentions towards Earth were, it did not see her as a threat yet.

There was a navigation console in the room with what appeared to be a very simple, U-shaped steering wheel set in it. Natasha moved to it just as she heard a voice over a loudspeaker. It had to have been a Skrull speaking in their own language, but it sounded rather like a recording of a Skrull speaking calmly than someone reacting to the current situation. She only wished she knew what it was saying. She almost immediately was given a good clue when the floor stopped being down. Down was now in the direction of the console in front of her and she fell against it. Shifting her body and kneeling on the console, she managed to grab the seat in front of the console, pull herself up to it, and awkwardly strap herself in. Only then was she able to go back to manipulating the wheel. The image on the main screen moved with her movements, but she could only hope she was steering the ship and not just the camera. North America came into view and was growing in size.

Tapping her headset, Natasha tried again. "This is Black Widow of the Avengers, is anyone receiving me? Avengers Mansion? Baxter Building?" Natasha shouted her hails over the blare of the alarms and the recorded Skrull voice as she veered towards New England. If she could not raise someone to help soon, she would overshoot New England and try to put this thing down in the ocean. If she could…

Something did not look right, even from this height. The cities all looked strange. She needed a better look, but the monitor she needed was against what had been the side wall and was now the ceiling. She unstrapped herself, climbed around to the back of her chair, stood on top of it, and jumped up to the central chair in the room. Then she repeated the same steps, clambering onto the back of that chair and jumping up to the far console. While clinging to the chair in front of it, she touched the smaller screen and looked down to see the main screen below her. Sure enough, she was manipulating the camera from here and was able to, with some tinkering, zoom in on Manhattan.

Manhattan was just… gone. Decimated. The World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Baxter Building, the Chrysler Building, every single one reduced to rubble. It was the same with other boroughs, except the ruins of Queens seemed to be overgrowing with trees and other vegetation.

"What is going on here? This…" she said, starting to tear up, but was interrupted when her down-orientation started to shift to the far corner of the room and she nearly lost her hold on the chair. She dropped down to the central chair, bounced off of it and landed on the side wall that was now a slanted floor. She skidded down the wall/floor until she could jump up and grab the navigator's seat again. After strapping herself back in, she struggled to level out the ship as her mind searched for explanations. Perhaps a giant hologram or illusion to fool invaders? "That has to be it!" she said out loud.

Just then the ship lurched as if against some physical impact in the air. It had not come from one of the alien vessels up in the sky though, but from somewhere on the ground. Someone on the ground was firing some kind of powerful energy weapon at her ship. The ship shivered and shook in response. She tried to turn the ship into a barrel roll to avoid the energy weapon. From somewhere outside the room, she could hear an explosion. She kept her eyes glued on the main screen, searching the ground for her attacker until she finally caught sight of it, hovering low in the sky over Manhattan. The source of the energy beam was a tall metal tower that splayed out at the bottom like a giant tripod, floating about 10 miles over the surface.

The room was growing painfully hot. Natasha ignored it and screamed a cry for bloody vengeance as she aimed straight for the tower, intent on ramming it. The ship was rocked by another explosion and the main screen went blank just as it looked like she was about to hit the tower. The next shockwave that ripped through the ship tore the navigation chair loose from its moorings and sent Natasha, still strapped in, rolling across the floor towards the back of the room as the whole front end of the room buckled inward and the screen exploded into shards. Natasha was aware of flashing light, sparks flying, flickering flames, and then cool, moist chemical foam smothering her before she stopped being conscious of anything for a time.

The Isle of Manhattan

July 21, 1998

Three riders on horseback rode towards the downed space saucer, so unlike the Martian Tripods in design, that had just dug a long, deep trench through the ruins of the Financial District.

"Up ahead. Isn't that Arrow on top of the ship already?" Killraven asked.

"I'm sure you're right," M'Shulla said. "Arrow can smell salvage from miles away."

Arrow recognized the three of them and waved his sword in the air to let them know the way was safe.

"I wonder who did this to this ship…" Killraven said, dismounting as they drew up close to where Arrow was fidgeting with what appeared to be a hatch. The saucer ship was as wrecked as the buildings around it. "It wasn't our side." His companions dismounted behind him.

With a triumphant smile, Arrow turned to the others as the hatch opened with a hiss.

"There's someone alive in there," M'Shulla said. "Human, I think. What shall we do, Killraven?"

"Do? Isn't it obvious? We see if it's a traitor or a slave," Killraven said as he went straight inside. "It's a woman!"

While Arrow clambered up to the top of the saucer for another look around and the woman with Killraven stood like a sentry at the open hatch, M'Shulla joined Killraven inside. The interior was all wrecked, burnt, and covered with foam. A soft moan came from the red-haired woman on the floor.

"Another redhead!" M'Shulla joked, nudging Killraven and referring to his own crimson locks.

"She's alive is all I can tell. We'll examine her better in the light of day," Killraven said and the two men gingerly picked her up between them.

"A ferry is coming!" Arrow said before they were even outside.

"No doubt to investigate the crash. Then we don't have much time to deal with our prisoner here…" Killraven said as they laid Natasha down outside.

The fresher air outside the spacecraft was already starting to bring Natasha around as soon as they laid her down. "Who…?" she asked, disoriented again.

"We have not much time for words," Killraven said, drawing his own sword. "Are you for or against the Martians?"

"What?" was all Natasha could ask, blinking in the sun and raising her arm slowly to shield her face.

"You don't have any time now," Arrow said. "I can see robots coming off the ferry."

"Then we leave her here and attack!" Killraven said. "If there is anything still of value on this wreck, we can't let them have it!"

"Wait…" Natasha said feebly as she slowly lifted herself up. She could see a weird collection of two white men, one with long red hair, a blonde-haired woman and a black man running away from her down the cracked and broken remains of a city street. They were all dressed in some weird, medieval fetish clothing and sporting swords in their hands. Only the woman turned back and looked at her. There was something familiar about her face and she seemed to be looking back at Natasha with the same quizzical expression.

Before either of them could shout anything to the other, Natasha felt her whole body go tingly and then, just as suddenly, go numb. She saw her hand reach out to the blonde woman as she struggled to speak, but she saw the woman fading away. No, the whole world around her was fading away. What had Daredevil told her? That the explosion would throw her out of space and time for awhile, until she found her way back? Yes, the words came back to her now and she understood, with a little horror, what they meant.

And then she was gone.


	13. Chapter 13

"Alone Against the Absorbing Man"

By Scott Casper, thanks to Karl Kesel for Daredevil #360

January 15, 1997

Manhattan Diamond Exchange

'Crusher' Creel had a magic power; it was both his blessing and his curse. It was a blessing in that he could transform his body in miraculous ways, but a curse in that it made him a magnet for superheroes. It never seemed fair. Being the Absorbing Man should have been a free ticket to the best things in life, but whenever he tried to take what he wanted, some superhero would always show up and stop him. So Creel had learned his lesson – albeit not the lesson the superheroes had tried to teach him. He had learned to be sneakier.

There was a time when Creel would have absorbed the size of a building and simply smashed his way into the diamond exchange, oblivious to what alarms he was setting off. Now, he had learned how to sneak like a burglar and disable motion detectors. It was finally about to pay off too, as he had actually, finally made it to the diamonds storage room where a fortune just waited for him to scoop it up into a sack.

Unfortunately for 'Crusher' Creel, someone else in the room with him knew how to sneak too. She too had evaded detection by security. Creel did not see or hear her enter the room and come up behind him. The Black Widow stood poised for a moment, targeting with her arms extended, before activating her wrist-mounted weapons. He was completely taken by surprise when she shot him in the back of the head and the top of his back with exploding pellets. He was dead instantly.

"Yes, finally!" the Black Widow whispered, pumping a fist in the air in a moment of triumph. Then it was time to move on, for every alarm in the exchange seemed to wake up from the explosions. It hardly mattered. The Black Widow knew the way out and could reach the roof access door by wall-climbing faster than any security guard could arrive. She was off the roof and on a neighboring building before she heard the first police siren in the distance. She was two roofs away when she spun around, pulled her short blonde hair away from her face, and tried to see who was following her.

She could not see anyone, but her intuition told her someone was there. Rather than confront a foe she could not see, she turned forward again and moved on, doubling her speed and performing more acrobatics in crossing from building to building. A block away, she was confident she would have a strong lead on anyone following her. She turned back again, crouched low on a high ledge, and watched for her pursuer to come into view.

Natasha Barton had materialized slowly on the roof of the diamond exchange, in time to see a woman in a tight-fitting, black leather uniform not unlike her own fleeing from the scene. Natasha could hear the alarms below her and the sirens in the distance and put the clues together. This woman was fast and agile, surely an Olympic-level gymnast – but so was Natasha. She not only closed the gap with the woman she was pursuing, but kept out of sight as she did so. Finally, when the woman stopped to crouch on a high ledge and watcher for her pursuer, Natasha thought it was time to step out on the ledge and confront her. "Hi," Natasha said.

The blonde woman turned and fired, but to Natasha's experienced eye she telegraphed the attack and Natasha was able to leap to the wall, run across it, and land on the ledge behind the blonde woman. The narrowness of the ledge worked against the blonde woman now, he spun around to attack, but had to spin around too slowly and Natasha was already waiting at close range to block the elbow jab she anticipated.

"Wait, I know you!" Natasha said. The recognition had dawned on her suddenly that this was the same blonde woman as the freedom fighter she had seen working with Killraven.

"Well I don't know _you_!" the other woman protested with suspicious intensity. She altered her fighting style to short jabs with both fists, pushing Natasha back across the ledge every time she stepped back while she blocked with her forearms. Then she switched tactics again, extending a length of cable from her wrist weapon, exactly like Natasha's "widow's line", only this woman held the length like a garrote and lunged for Natasha's neck with it.

Natasha risked taking another step backward. Although it was only a one-story drop from this side of the building to the next lower building, around the corner of the ledge was a sheer, five-story drop to the sidewalk in front of the office building. Natasha lifted her right leg high and kicked the other woman in the stomach. The other woman doubled over, but also slipped her garrote around Natasha's leg like a lariat. Rather than wait to be thrown off-balance, Natasha let the woman hold up her right leg, swung her left leg up in an arc into the air, and kicked the other woman in the head, knocking her hard against a window. Then Natasha pushed off from her attacker with both feet, did a quick flip in mid-air, and came down on her feet right at the very tip of the ledge's corner facing her opponent.

"Look, just stop attacking me!" Natasha paused to say. "I only want to talk!"

"Fine, you want to talk? Then stop wearing my mother's face first!"

Natasha froze, staring hard at the young woman dressed like her before her. The word 'what' was frozen on her lips, but went unspoken.

"I don't know if you're a Skrull, or some kind of new Adaptoid, or what…" the girl claiming to be her daughter went on, angrily, but clearly shaken, "but you're either going to stop wearing her face or I'll knock that face off you myself." She shook a finger at Natasha as she spoke.

Natasha studied the other woman's face closely. "…Yelena…?" she asked hesitantly.

"Stop that!" Yelena cried. She fired an exploding pellet, her own 'widow's sting', from her wrist weapon, but telegraphed the move by thrusting her arm forward like for a punch. Natasha was able to dodge around the corner of the building in time. The missile struck a window across the street and shattered it. Yelena raced to the corner, but there was no sign of the 'imposter' on the building's front ledge.

"Yelena…Black Widow…" Natasha said from the higher ledge one story higher. "I was the original Black Widow. I was thrown forward in time when you were just a baby."

"Liar!" Yelena yelled, firing another blast at the ledge where Natasha was standing. The ledge crumbled, but Natasha had already jumped clear, down to a flagpole jutting out from the same level Yelena was on. Yelena blasted the flagpole too, but not before Natasha had already swung off it and back towards the ledges, landing one story lower, but on the far end of the front side of the building. "My mother died saving the world from an invasion fleet!" Yelena lowered herself down from her ledge, but began crawling on the vertical face of the building on all fours. Her burning gaze she kept riveted on Natasha. Her lips curled back in a snarl and she grit her teeth between words. "You're making a mockery of every reason I took her place as the Black Widow!"

"So you _were_ stopping a crime back there at the diamond exchange," Natasha said with relief in her voice. "When I appeared on the roof and heard alarms, then saw you leaving, I thought the worst. I'm sorry! Your father must be so proud!"

"My father is dead!" Yelena growled as she fired her 'widow's line' from her wrist weapon right at Natasha. Natasha twisted out of the way, but grabbed onto the line, not knowing of the electrical charge it carried. Natasha was momentarily paralyzed by the jolt, which was just what Yelena wanted. In the time that bought her, Yelena hopped down onto the same ledge, sprinted up to Natasha, and began choking her with both hands.

"Yelena…please…" Natasha managed to say, tearing at Yelena's strong hands with her own. "If there's any…chance I'm… telling the truth…hear me out…"

"With all the masters of disguise and shape-shifters and evil clones out there, you expect me to just accept you at face value?" Yelena said. "You're just another bad guy. And if I've learned one thing in life, it's that you have to kill the bad guys before they kill you, or everyone close to you."

"If you…really mean…that…then why…are you sparing me?"

Yelena kept choking for a moment longer before she loosened her grip. She knew it was true that she was holding back, so there seemed to be no need to pretend that she would kill this woman. At least not yet. "How can you prove you are who you say you are?" she asked instead as she stepped back.

Natasha rubbed her neck and glanced down at the four-story drop to the street that could have happened at any moment Yelena had simply pushed her off the ledge. "Any number of ways. Take me to a mind-reader with the X-Men or have your Sorcerer Supreme cast a spell on me. This is, when? The '90s still? Surely there's some scientific maternity test by now."

"This is 1997. My mother died 25 years ago. If you _are_ her, why are you only coming back now?"

"When the warp drives exploded on all those Skrull ships…" Natasha said, thinking hard. It was so difficult to remember now what had happened. "It must have created a small time warp. I was sucked in and thrown into the future. I've already been to another alternate future that was…well, it was pretty bad. This future takes place around the same time, but looks more like the world as I remember it. I'm drifting through time, but I'm hoping that I've gone as far forward as I'll go and will start drifting back to my own time soon. If that makes sense…?"

"Not a word of it. But keep talking."

"Even back in my day there were times when it seemed like we'd lost one of the good guys, but really hadn't. I attended Captain America's funeral back in '68, but it turned out he had just gone into hiding to retire so his son could take over being the new Captain America."

"And then we lost him too."

"Oh God, Steve Jr. too?" Natasha held her breath for a moment. "Are any of the old heroes still around?"

"Some of them…"

"Yelena, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. At least, not yet. I'm going to find my way back. I'm going to be a good mother to you. I'm going to keep your father alive so you have two loving parents, just like you always should have." Natasha looked around at herself. She felt that tingling, then numbing sensation again she felt just before she left Killraven's time.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Yelena asked as Natasha started to slowly disappear.

"I'm drifting again. Don't worry, I'll find my way back to you. I love you!" Natasha managed to say before she vanished completely.


	14. Chapter 14

"Nice to Be with You"

By Scott Casper

April 18, 1972

Avengers Mansion

Clint Barton, the Avenger known as Hawkeye, had not known what to expect when he was summoned from the basement combat simulation room to the main floor public conference room by his teammates and friends, Peter and Dane. Since the death of his wife, Natasha, alias the Black Widow, two months prior, Clint had thrown himself into training whenever he was not in action. Since the end of the Kree-Skrull War there had been no action and Clint was tired of training, so he was really hoping this was about a new mission. What he was not expecting was that they had called him up to meet a guest.

Dr. Stephen Strange was not a stranger to the Avengers, having asked them to help save the world with him only a year ago through the mutual connection of Dane Whitman. Dane, the Avenger known as the Black Knight, stood by his friend Stephen now, talking in hushed tones while Peter, the Avenger known as Spider-Man, stood a bit further away. That they were all in costume – or gaudy uniforms, depending on how you looked at them – said to Clint that his earlier hope would come true and this would be about a new mission.

"Bout time you guys came back to get me," Clint said. "You've been up to something all hush-hush for almost a month now and I wanted in on it!"

"Yes…well, sorry about that, Clint," Dane said. "We were called away rather abruptly, you know."

"By Strange here?" Clint asked with a nod in Stephen's direction as he stepped closer. "And you couldn't come back and get me too, magic man…?" There was something of a hard edge to Clint's jibs even though he did not intend them, but his voice trailed away at the end when he noticed that Stephen's enormous red cape was concealing someone behind him. "Who have you got there?"

Peter had quietly stepped up and intercepted Clint as he crossed the room. Now Peter laid his hand on Clint's shoulder. "Easy, Clint," Peter said quietly.

Clint's suspicions were immediately aroused by this and he would have jerked away, had the man grasping his shoulder not possessed the proportionate strength of a spider.

"I could not fetch you, Hawkeye, because it was not I who summoned them this time," Stephen said. "I was summoned as well, and by someone whose call to action took us to another universe to try and save*."

(*See Amazing…Black Widow Annual #1; the whole story of which will hopefully be told someday in the Marvel Lab: the End miniseries!)

At that, Stephen stepped slowly aside. From behind his cloak, Clint could now see the figure seated in a chair behind where he had been standing. It was the impossibly familiar figure of his dead wife, Natasha, and she was staring back at him with tears in her eyes.

Clint just stood there, dumbfounded as Natasha slowly rose to her feet. He was vaguely aware of Peter letting go of his shoulder but he still did not move. Neither did Natasha. The two of them just stood there, staring at each other and unable to be the first to speak. The others just stood where they were, watching them and not knowing what to say either.

Natasha broke the silence first. "Clint, I'm sorry." After a pause in which Clint was still silent, she added, "I'm sorry we didn't bring you too, but there just wasn't time."

"So…" Clint said, turning to look at Peter and Dane, "you were out saving some other universe?"

"We tried but we wound up just observing a lot. It was too big for us…" Peter said softly.

"We did manage to save the Silver Surfer," Dane offered. "He was sucked into that other universe by–"

"But there was time to get these guys?" Clint asked, returning his attention to Natasha and ignoring what Dane was saying. "And not me?"

"There wasn't time to deal with this," Natasha said. She took a step toward Clint, only to see Clint take a step back away from her. "See? I knew how hard it would be to tell you I didn't really die."

"Heck yeah it's hard!" Clint said with a sarcastic laugh. "C'mon guys," he said, shooting another glance at his friends as he took another step back. "We just fought Skrulls! Are you telling me you're not the least bit thinking that this is a shape-changer?"

"Hawkeye—Clint…" Natasha said, taking another tentative step toward him.

"Hey, no real names in front of the non-Avenger!" Clint said. "The real 'Tasha would know that!"

"I know this is hard to accept…"

"Hard to accept? You were on a spaceship. In space. It blew up. What are you gonna' tell me? That you jumped out the back in the nick of time?"

"No, it's more complicated than that. If you'd calm down, I can tell you–"

"I am calm!" Clint shouted, anything but calmly.

Stephen fake-coughed to get their attention. "If I may…Hawkeye, we would like to believe this is the real Black Widow, but only you can tell us for sure. I have already proposed that I cast a spell, a 'mind-meld' spell, if you will. It would allow you both to interact with each other in your own, shared, mental mindscape. There, any attempt at deceiving the other would become immediately obvious and, perhaps by process of elimination, you would arrive at what is true."

"And if she turns out to be a Skrull, can I give her a mental whoopin' in this mindscape?" Clint asked with all seriousness.

"You would both be free to interact with each other and your environment as if you were physically present. You could even suffer harm if something happened to your mental self. This 'mindscape' will be a pocket dimension created temporarily out of the Astral Plane. You two and your shared thoughts will choose the shape and appearance of that dimension. The Black Widow is willing. Are you, Hawkeye?"

"Let's do this," he said.

"Good luck, you two," Peter said. He and Dane stepped further back.

Stephen began to chant and, as he wove his fingers in the air, they left a faint trail of sparks and smoke behind them. "Aya jai Hoggoth fortaggen guru dai…" Stephen began. The rest of his words began to sound less like words coming from him and more like the walls around them humming with vibration. The sparks lasted and hovered in the air in a visibly emerging pattern that grew in complexity until it was impossible for the eye to even observe it all.

A moment later it was all gone. The room was gone. Their friends were gone. Avengers Mansion was gone. Clint and Natasha stood on what appeared to be a concrete floor surrounded by blackness, though they could still see each other clearly, as if lit by some unseen source of light.

Immediately a stone wall rose up behind Natasha. Immediately after that, a steel wall with a bank vault-style door in it appeared behind Clint.

"Where did those come from?" Clint asked.

"Dr. Strange said we would create our own environment," Natasha said. "Maybe we subconsciously felt our backs were against the wall…?"

"Is that how you feel? Because I feel like you're hiding something behind your wall."

"Okay then, let's take it down…" Natasha tried to concentrate on wishing for the wall to vanish. It slowly faded from sight but all that was behind it was blackness.

"Is that all this is? Some sort of trust exercise? I don't see that this is going to get us anywhere."

"Apparently not. Your wall is still there."

"Oh, yeah…" Clint said, turning around for a look at it. "How tall do you think that wall is?"

"All the way, it looks like. Clint–"

"Call me Hawkeye."

"Oh, come on…how am I going to prove to you that I'm real and I'm not dead if I'm calling you Hawkeye? Shouldn't we be telling each other things only the two of us would know? Like that your middle name is Francis? Or that we decided to name our baby Yelena?"

"My middle name is public record for anyone who found out the rest of name…and I did tell some people about the name Yelena already."

"Did you take her to be baptized yet?"

"No, I–look…I'm just not comfortable discussing Yelena…"

"Okay…" Natasha said, looking away uncomfortably. There was a long, horribly awkward pause. "I can tell you how I died – I mean, how I didn't die – but I'm not sure you're going to find it believable enough to convince you of anything."

"Well, it would beat standing around here saying nothing," Clint said sarcastically.

"Eerrrr!" Natasha screamed through gritted teeth, her hands raised in the air. "Why do you have to be so frustrating? I can't believe you can't tell it's really me!" Clint raised a warning finger and looked like he was about to say something angry back in his own defense. To pre-empt that, before a shouting match could escalate, Natasha got her temper under control quickly and said calmly, "Okay, if I can't convince you with what I know…maybe I can show you things as only the two of us would know it. We can…we can shape this place to look like anywhere, right? Okay…watch…"

Natasha shut her eyes, screwed up her face into a grimace of concentration and thought as hard as she could. Around her and Clint a large open room began to take form and crates began to stack up around them and then a body in a purple bodysuit appeared on the floor next to them.

"What the–!" Clint exclaimed in alarm as he jumped back. In his hand now was his old compound bow that he had retired almost two years ago. He reached behind his back and felt familiar vanes on his quiver-full of arrows. He allowed himself a half-smile and then glanced down at the floor and the body there. It had taken him a moment but he recognized the man as his old mentor, the Swordsman. Clint bent down to check his vitals and felt he was alive.

"Recognize this place?" Natasha asked as she stepped back into the darkness. "This is the Bleecker Street warehouse* Remember what happened here?"

(*The scene of The Avengers #30, published July 1966)

Clint realized what she meant and started to look around in alarm but it was too late. Before he could do anything else, he felt himself being grabbed by the shoulders from behind and lifted easily off the floor.

"You won't find me so easy to beat!" came a voice from behind Clint's ear. He recognized the voice at once, and then a moment later realized he recognized the words too.

"Power Man!" Clint shouted, still confused about how these old partners in crime wound up in this dreamscape.

"Hah! You struggle all you like! You fight to the end!" Power Man shouted as he hoisted Clint still higher into the air and then put Clint in a bear hug. "I like that! It'll make my victory all the more satisfying!"

Like before, Clint could feel fear clutching at his heart. Knowing how strong Power Man was, the end could come at any moment with Power Man squeezing hard enough to shatter his rib cage. Yet, just like before, Clint instinctively reached back behind Power Man's head, grasping desperately for a hold and enough leverage to do something to escape the super-powerful hold he was in.

"Release him–now!" Natasha said. She pointed her bracelet at Power Man's back from behind him and fired her 'widow's sting' at him. It had been a desperate gamble back then; had Power Man not dropped Clint in surprise they might have both been electrocuted. Power Man did the same thing this time as well.

"Hurry, Hawkeye!" Natasha said. "Remember what you did next? When I thought your aim was off and you'd miss?"

"Sure, I did this!" Clint said. He stumbled away from Power Man and spun around. He reached to his back, found an explosive-tipped arrow in his quiver right where he always used to keep it, and fired it well over Power Man's head to the top of the main support beam holding up the warehouse roof. Almost as fast, he dodged back and to the side as he fired a second exploding arrow just past Power Man's left knee and took out the bottom of the beam. With a rumble, the ceiling started to cave in right over where Power Man was momentarily paralyzed by Natasha's electrical blast on full intensity. A third arrow straight to the ceiling only hastened the collapse and caused thousands of pounds of cement and mortar and wooden rafters to start raining in large chunks down on Power Man's head.

Natasha circled wide around the falling debris, breaking into a run, as she feared she would not see Clint once more walking out on her. But he was. "Clint, wait!" she called after him. "What about the things we said to each other here? When I told you I had come to my senses and the brainwashing had worn off?" She moved closer to him and grabbed his arm, tried to turn him around to face her, but had to settle for moving up beside him and putting her head on his shoulder. "I told you it was the Reds. They had brainwashed me into betraying you, but when it mattered most, my love for you won out. I freed myself from their control! And you told me you wanted to believe me. You must remember this as well as I do. Could anyone else have remembered this so well?" she asked, waving her hands at the ruined warehouse around them.

"You're forgetting something, though," Clint said, stepping away from her again. "Both Power Man and the Swordsman were there. Power Man was buried until after we split, but he probably wasn't even unconscious. He could have heard every word and told anyone.

The warehouse began to dissolve around them. "Is this your doing?" Natasha asked Clint.

In place of the rubble, long wooden pews began to form across the floor in neat rows. The windows brightened, elongated and grew colorful as the glass became stained into various patterns of religious significance.

"Yeah, I figured two of us can play the memory lane game," Clint said. "You recognize this place?"

"How could I not?" Natasha asked. "It's the church we were married in."

"There's Cap, my best man," Clint said, nodding in the direction of where Captain America stood on the side of the dais. It was Steve Rogers, who had worn that identity through the '40s and '50s, and not the back-up Cap from WWII, Jeffrey Mace, who had been revived from being frozen in ice by the Avengers in '64. He wore the familiar winged mask, flared red gloves and carried the same famous shield, but otherwise wore a tuxedo for the part. "He was so impressed that I took on you, Power Man and the Swordsman single-handed that he sponsored me for membership in the Avengers after that. But with my criminal record, it was still '67 before he got my membership approved, and six months after that when we finally got hitched."

"I remember it perfectly," Natasha said. The church building was clearer, more distinct now that she added her own memories of it to his. In addition to Captain America, the other Avengers on the active roster at that time were there: Rick Jones, Cap's new Bucky, and Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man. Both also wore tuxedoes, while Rick retained his domino mask and Peter wore his Spider-Man mask and gloves.

An organ played the familiar tune of "Here Comes the Bride" and Namor, resplendent in his own tuxedo, marched in, as he once had in place of Natasha's father to give the bride away. Behind him walked Janet Pym, the only founding Avenger present. She was beautiful in her bridesmaid dress, her tail tucked into the crook of her arm and the only indication that she was Monkey, Giant Ape's partner.

It was a beautiful scene and Natasha was thankful for this moment to see the event from Clint's perspective, but the loudness of the organ was soon drowned out by the north wall of the church buckling and the windows shattering inwards. Huge, green, metal fists crashed through the old, thick, masonry of the church's outer wall. The brickwork crumbled quickly, revealing the giant form of the Titanium Man through the opening.

"What?" Natasha shouted.

"Avengers Assemble!" cried Steve Rogers as he sprang toward the Titanium Man. "Fall into a defensive line until the civilians are clear!"

The Titanium Man had a gun-like weapon mounted on each forearm. He held them together and fired. Two spheres connected by a cord were fired simultaneously and quickly broken open to reveal weighted nets. Aimed at Namor, the nets unfurled and wrapped around him, while a second cord leading back to one of the weapons channeled electricity into the nets. ever wearing any kind of shoes – even with a tuxedo – that might have grounded him, Namor took the electricity and grunted in pain.

Rick Jones was escorting the priest to the vestry door when Peter shot webbing past him from his web-shooters and gummed up the door jam.

"No!" Peter called out. "My spider-sense is going off from every direction! Find them cover in here, but don't try to use the exits!"

As if in response, the vestry door exploded. It was all Rick could do to twist around and block the priest from shrapnel, taking a wooden shard in the back of his shoulder in the process as they dove to the floor.

At the back doorway now stood Boomerang wearing gray military-style fatigues, a matching helmet, and a flak jacket covered in boomerangs. He stepped into the chapel and let a boomerang fly from his right hand, arcing quickly towards Peter, before throwing a second boomerang from his left hand straight at Peter.

"The Masters of Evil?" Natasha shouted, staring at Clint as he notched an arrow in his bow. "They never attacked our wedding!"

Clint, instead of answering, fired an arrow straight at the cord channeling electricity to the nets entangling Namor and snapped it.

The electric lights around the chapel shattered and exploded with sparks that rained down on the heroes. Also crackling with electricity, Electro stood in his bright yellow and green garb at the main doors to block them.

Steve was in close quarters with the Titanium Man now, standing on the right forearm of the giant robot armor suit and about to dig the edge of his shield into a joint. Janet had already torn her bridesmaid's dress in an awfully revealing way during the gymnastics it took to climb onto the Titanium Man's back. Her tail-over-the-eyes trick failed to distract her foe, however, and a giant left fist slammed into Steve's shield, brushing him off to the floor.

Namor had already shredded the nets off of him but found himself the target of further electrocution at the hands of Electro. The lightning bolts hitting him would have killed an ordinary man twice over, but Namor was no ordinary man. Despite his fingers blackening and his ankle wings burning from the amperes coursing through him, Namor was able to reach over from side to side, pick up the pews closest to him, and tossed them across the chapel toward Electro. Though the electrical field around Electro stopped the missiles, the broken debris from them piled up in front of him quickly, giving Namor both cover and respite.

Boomerang's first thrown boomerang had begun emitting hypersonics that forced Clint and Natasha to cover their ears and struggle to keep their balance. Peter had caught the boomerang thrown head-on at him with webbing while in mid-leap, slung it wide around him, and let it crash into the far corner where it exploded like a grenade. Distracted by the explosion on one side and the hypersonics coming from the other side, Peter barely managed to twist out of the way as Boomerang swung a razor-edged boomerang in his hand at him. As Peter landed on one foot, Boomerang came at him with a fourth boomerang in his left hand, but Peter was faster and he landed a pulled punch on Boomerang's gut that made the villain double over and drop his razor-rang.

The hypersonic boomerang was coming back around right towards Peter, but Natasha managed to focus enough to shoot an electrical blast from her bracelet at the wayward missile that overloaded its electronics and shorted out the hypersonics.

"Namor, trade foes!" Captain America shouted. He launched his circular shield across the room, rebounding off a wall to hit Electro from his unguarded flank.

Namor leapt across half the width of the chapel, tackling the Titanium Man and knocking him back through the wall outside.

"I recognize all this," Natasha said to Clint. "All these things happened, but you rearranged the details into this scene. Why?"

"To see if you could tell the difference," Clint said as he walked over towards the giant hole in the wall. Even as he did so, the scene around them grew darker and quieter. Like a distant echo, they could still hear Namor mangling the Titanium Man's armor with his fists.

Natasha paused before asking, "Then do you believe me now?" Even the rhythmic pounding of Namor's fists on titanium grew silent. Clint and Natasha could still see each other, but the church around them was plunged into blackness.

Clint pulled another arrow from his quiver, notched it to his bow and turned around. "You know what 'Tasha knew, think like 'Tasha thought, but you could have got all that from being a mind-reader, or using a mind-meld spell like this on her sometime in the past," he said with a scowl. He raised his bow and let his arrow fly.

Natasha twisted hard out of the arrow's way, knowing that if Clint wanted to kill her, at this range, there was little her dodging could do to stop him. The arrow just missed her shoulder, which meant that, as sure a shot as Clint was, that he had meant to just miss her. Natasha used her sideways momentum and tumbled further away from Clint, but at the same time she knew she needed to put some obstacles between them and she had just helped make all the scenery fade. She concentrated hard as she spun in the air over a second arrow and, before Clint's third arrow took flight, she had willed a statue of Captain America to appear out of the darkness between them.

A scene began to take shape around them again, this one looking like a gallery of statues. Natasha ducked behind a statue of the Thing, but instinctively ducked after another arrow was fired and was just missed by a steel cord wrapping around the statue that would have ensnared her, too, a second earlier.

"Nice," Clint said sarcastically. "You try to prove to me you're Natasha; then you conjure up from memory someplace I don't even recognize."

"You refused to come with because there was a game on TV," Natasha said as she crouched, listening for any sound of motion from Clint to react to. She could recognize some arrows by the sound of how he drew them from his quiver, or how he held them to the bow, but she did not know everything he might have dreamed up in his arsenal. "This is Alicia Grimm's studio, from the one and only time we ever got invited to one of her shows."

"So you're saying I was never there for you?" Clint called back angrily.

Natasha heard him load two arrows onto the bow and dodged back toward the Cap statue as the two explosive-tipped arrows tore the Thing statue apart.

"What about you not being there for me?" Clint continued to rant. "What about making me a widower and a single dad and not even able to look at our daughter because every time I do I see she has your eyes and it tears me up inside!"

Natasha thought about that, realized its meaning and grew hot with anger. "You…bastard!" she cried as she rolled out from behind the Captain America statue into a kneeling crouch, raised her arm and fired an arc of electricity across the studio to Clint's bow. At this range, the electricity only stung enough to make him lose his grip on the bow and, as he fumbled to take aim again, she sprinted towards him.

Seeing her fist coming, Clint swung to block with his bow, while holding his arrow in his off-hand like an upturned knife. He jabbed forward with the arrow, but it was a feint to buy him a half-second to shift his stance and bring his bow around to swing again.

"You knew it was me the whole time!" Natasha yelled as she swung her foot up and around and kicked the bow out of Clint's hand. She twisted around quickly, brought her hand up like she was going to fire her 'widow's sting' again at point blank range, but this too was a feint to put Clint on the defensive long enough for her to drop to an offensive stance and lead with her right fist.

"Bull!" Clint hollered back as he blocked the punch and pulled away quickly, anticipating Natasha would follow-through and go for an arm hold.

"No, you're lying! You've been putting me through all this, making me prove myself, to punish me! Punish me for not being dead!" she yelled as she dropped her plan to go for an arm hold and tried to surprise him with a lightning series of straight-on jabs.

"Not for not being dead!" Clint roared back as he blocked half her punches, just took the other half of them, and returned with some punches of his own. "For not telling me sooner! For making me think you were dead and–" it was not until he saw himself punch her in the face that he realized, through all his anger and pain, what this had devolved into. "Oh God!" he cried as he dropped all his defenses and rushed to hug her into his arms. "I'm so sorry!"

"I'm sorry too!" Natasha cried, holding him back. Tears welled up in her eyes, only partially caused by the face punch. "I never wanted to be away from you! You have to know that!"

"Oh, honey, I missed you so much! I love you."

"I love you too."

EPILOGUE

One hundred million miles from Earth, the Skrull scout ship, Farzog-class, called Gro Dorreg sat in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, scanning Earth communications.

"Supremor," the communications officer on the bridge said. "There's an urgent, hyperspace message from the Homeworld. All ships are supposed to pull out of Earth sector at once. No Kree engagements can be risked*."

(*Translated from the Skrull language, 'natch)

"Ridiculous!" Skorz growled. "There are no Kree remaining within a hundred joolz of Earth! But…we must obey the Emperor. Helmsman, plot us a course for the next star out of this backwater system. Communicator, send an encrypted message to our allies on Earth to alert them the back-up plan has been canceled."

Sometime later, on Earth, eleven of the leaders of Zodiac were appearing to each other via closed circuit television. Noticeably absent amongst them was the new Scorpio.

"Where is Scorpio now?" Capricorn asked.

"No idea,' Taurus said. "We're still searching, of course, but the more important news is that we just intercepted some sort of message sent to Scorpio's Colorado installation – from outer space. Since Scorpio was the driving force behind Project Sweep*, I think we can assume now that Project Sweep was influenced, if not conceived, by some alien party. Therefore, I propose we shut down Project Sweep immediately for review."

(*See recent issues of 1970s X-Men for hints about what Project Sweep would have been)

"We'll all want to see proof of this claim, Taurus," Aries said, "but given the activity of alien races around Earth lately, I don't think we can treat this claim lightly. I second your proposal."

"Any objections?" Taurus asked. "Very well, Project Sweep is hereby tabled. The next scheduled stage of the plan was in my territory, so I am alerting my lieutenant now to stand-down."

Shortly, in New York City, Watch-Lord stood in a secret underground bunker with twenty other operatives in modern-day armor and helmets less flashy and stylized than his own. Their weapons were even now powering up for the initial Project Sweep attack. But then, a red light began to flash on the wall-mounted phone.

"Hold on, men," Watch-Lord said. He picked up the receiver and heard Taurus' instructions. "Uh-huh. Right, sir. Okay, men! We've been given the order to stand-down. Project Sweep is back on stand-by until further notice."

"Great," one of the other operatives said sarcastically. "Are we still getting time and a half for mission pay while on stand-by?"

Watch-Lord was half-tempted to ask on the phone when he heard a dial tone. "He's hung up."

"They better not try to re-assign us off of field work," said another. "The only reason I switched to field work was because the dental coverage was better and I've got an appointment for a new crown next week."

Watch-Lord looked around at the company he had to keep these days and missed holding the Black Widow hostage. He sighed. "That's it. I'm quitting this business."

At that very moment, above the Zodiac bunker where Watch-Lord was thinking seriously of a career change, was the street where the Astrologer was out walking. The man known as the Astrologer had been out on the streets for awhile now, having escaped jail time for his cooperation in a police investigation of Zodiac. The Astrologer's sanity always seemed to come and go, and this week, he was marching the streets while carrying a sign that read, "The end is near!"

A police van drove past where the Astrologer had stopped for a moment's rest on the sidewalk. The van, transporting a prisoner, proceeded to drive a half-block further before a rubber clown nose stuck to the back door of the van exploded. Its hinges broken by the explosion, the door was kicked off from the inside and a man agilely jumped out of the still-moving van before it could screech to a stop.

"Ha!" the man cried as he ran off the street and tried to blend into the crowd on the sidewalk as much as his prison uniform allowed. "They thought they could hold Eliot Franklin, but the Clown will have the last laugh on them all!"

As the guards from the van fanned out to look for their escaping prisoner, a blue blur of light whizzed down the street, circled around the van, and then zig-zagged through the crowd, alarming everyone with the gusts of wind it kicked up. After it reached the Clown, he felt himself grabbed by the back of his shirt and pulled back into the open street before he knew what was happening to him.

"Aww…nuts," Eliot said as the guards bore down on him. The blue blur slowed down enough to be visible as Pietro, the mutant speedster known as Quicksilver.

"I trust you can handle this?" Pietro shouted to the guards. "I have a party to get to–", but if there was more to that thought, Pietro was gone before he could say it.

Pietro kept speeding along until he reached Avengers Mansion. There, his sister Wanda was just exiting a taxi cab. She wore a fashionable dress and wide-brimmed hat, not at all like the costume of the Scarlet Witch.

"Before you say you beat me here – I was delayed," Pietro said.

"Uh-huh," was all Wanda said, with a mocking smile.

"I was! There was a prisoner who escaped from a police van…"

They compared notes on their way up to the front door where they were greeted by Janet Pym, alias Monkey, though dressed in a colorful blouse and skirt instead of her costume.

"Jan! I didn't know you'd be here!" Wanda exclaimed and hugged her.

"I may not be an active Avenger anymore, but you know if someone tells me there's a party, I'm there!" Jan said with a laugh and a swish of her tail. "Come on in!"

"Is anyone else in costume?" Pietro asked.

"Oh, about half of everyone is. Don't worry about it," Jan said as she ushered them inside.

"In the library again?" Wanda asked.

"No, Natasha wanted it in the public conference room…something about it having special significance, though I haven't asked why yet."

The three of them moved slowly through the gallery and passed the child-like android they called the Vision, standing against the wall in sleep mode and looking like a statue. They came, at last, to the doorway to the conference room where a banner had been hung reading, "Welcome home, Natasha." Dane was at the doorway, in armor and with the Ebony Blade sheathed at his side, but missing his helmet and cape. Dane was talking to Rick Jones, out of his Bucky costume and wearing the more garish clothes of a hippie with just a pin on his chest resembling Captain America's first shield.

Inside, Natasha stood in the center of the room, her baby Yelena in her arms. She still remembered her adventure through time and meeting a future adult version of Yelena, but that seemed more like a dream now. This was real.

Clint held his wife by the shoulder. She had told him all about her adventures, lost in time, by now and he accepted them as fact. Around them were more of their friends – Peter and Gwen, Tony and Marianne, Steve and Betsy.

"Welcome home!" Wanda said as she came over and gave Natasha a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"Nice to be with you again," Pietro said.

"Nice to be with you too," Natasha said to everyone.


	15. Chapter 15

Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me"

By Scott Casper

August 17, 1972

_Spies and superheroes are not supposed to keep diaries or journals; too many secrets. But Dane suggested I keep one, at least temporarily, until I've sorted out this whole Ivan Petrovich situation._

_It was two months ago that I first learned that, after all these years, Ivan was looking to defect to the U.S. That was itself two weeks after he had first made contact with the State Department…but the State Dept and I have not been on the best of terms for a while now, so I suppose I understand why I had to learn this through other channels. After a few days of wrangling favors owed, Clint and I were not only allowed to see Ivan, but to bring him home with us as our houseguest until the State Dept decides what to do about his request for asylum._

_But that brings us to the question the rest of the Avengers keep asking me – why defect now? Is there some secret agenda? Is Ivan here to spy on us? It's certainly possible – we were both spies! And since Clint and I are Avengers, there's a whole world of other possibilities to consider. Is someone mind-controlling him? Is he a robot duplicate? An alien shape-shifter? A man wearing a very good mask? So I'm going to use this to help me keep track of his movements, my observations and anything that might be off about the man I once thought of like a second father._

_I don't remember Ivan ever being an early riser, but he was up before 10 am today. I had just got Yelena to settle down for a feeding and unbuttoned my blouse when he walked in from the kitchen._

"_Ya sozhaleyu_," Ivan said as he put his hand up over his face and turned to walk back into the kitchen. He was dressed for the day already in a blue and white polka dot shirt and blue jeans, though he had said nothing about having plans to go anywhere today the night before.

"No, it's okay. Stay. Just no Russian, remember? It makes Clint nervous."

Ivan stayed where he was, but kept his head turned away.

"I was actually hoping you were up," Natasha continued. "I'm supposed to be getting into costume and heading down to the basement to train with Clint. After Yelena is done – ow, not so hard! – I was hoping you would watch her for an hour or so."

"Of course. I would be happy to do so," Ivan said.

"It's important that I get back into shape," Natasha continued. Yelena was burping on her shoulder now. "I've got 10 more pounds of baby fat to burn off and I'm so out of practice. There…I think you're done, right honey?" she asked Yelena, holding her baby up in front of her and smiling at her. Yelena gave an adorable baby smile back and wiggled her legs. "You be good for Uncle Ivan."

"Can I still smoke?" Ivan asked as she was handing Yelena over.

"Not while you're holding her, please. If you need a smoke, put her in her crib. You don't have to hold her if she's sitting on the couch beside you. See if any cartoons are on TV, she loves those."

Natasha almost raced from the living room to the bedrooms, tossing off her lime green and red plaid blouse and matching skirt as fast as she could get them off. Despite the scale saying she was 10 pounds heavy, she still clung to the hope it was muscle weight and she would fit back into her costume just fine. And by costume she was thinking of her old, original one – the fishnet body stocking with black leotards over it. The skin-tight leather jumpsuit…she was afraid to try that one on just yet.

She was halfway done pulling the stocking up over herself when she was surprised by Clint's voice from the doorway.

"Hey gorgeous! I…say, you are looking gorgeous…" Clint said hungrily as he sauntered in towards her in his Hawkeye costume.

"Oh, Avenger, I didn't know you missed this costume…" Natasha said in her sexy voice. She put out her arms as Clint came towards her and she wrapped them around his shoulders. They kissed and…

Fifteen minutes later, Natasha was adjusting her costume again as she and Clint ran past the living room toward the stairs to the basement. It was so tight over her chest now it was uncomfortable. She saw Ivan and Yelena on the couch, watching television together. "Sorry, Ivan, we're just heading downstairs now!" Before Ivan could say anything, Clint and Natasha ran down the stairs, smiling stupidly like they were a pair of teenagers sneaking around.

The basement of the new Barton home, except for the laundry room in the corner, had been converted into a gym. They had not had a gym in the old house, preferring to use the facilities at Avengers Mansion, but ever since the pregnancy they knew that Natasha would be home more and would need to be able to work out here. It had gymnastic equipment, a punching bag and rubber floor mats – all mundane fare a normal couple could have afforded to put in their basement.

"So, jiu-jitsu, boxing or freestyle?" Natasha asked as they stepped onto the mats. Natasha was ready for freestyle; Clint was 90% predictable and always preferred freestyle. It played to his strengths and was the only time he was ever wildly unpredictable.

"Oh, you can pick…" Clint said. "We haven't done straight jiu-jitsu in a while…"

"No, freestyle would be fine." As surprised as Natasha was by Clint's offer, she realized she should not be; this was just like last night when Clint had asked her what she wanted for dinner. She ran through her usual mental list of ulterior motives for Clint as she assumed a defensive position and then launched into her attacks. She started with a feint that would look like she was going into a roundhouse kick, but then shifted into an elbow strike halfway through. For a moment, she was blinded by her own hair.

She had always worn her hair long, but it had been months since she last had it cut and it was now halfway down her back. She knew she would have to get it cut shorter before heading back into combat situations, though she had not yet decided how short. Above the shoulder would be safer, or perhaps she could just keep it in a long braid. Clint loved it long.

Clint, meanwhile, was supposed to take the bait and go for an arm hold to counter her elbow strike, so she could, in turn, flip him, but Clint knew her way too well to fall for that and did not even try for the arm hold. Instead he went to his favorite, jab feints to put her on the defensive. Instead of falling back she stepped closer, but leaned back to avoid the jab. At closer range, though, she could kick up and hook her left foot behind his right knee and try to pull him off-balance. Clint took the bait this time, grabbed for her leg to pull her off-balance with him. Natasha let him hold her left foot so she could kick up, twist around as she gained altitude and go for a chest kick with her free leg. But again she was too slow and Clint saw it coming, this time disengaging and tumbling backwards to avoid the chest kick.

"Whoa!" Clint cried as he tumbled and she did not blame him. It had been a more aggressive maneuver than they normally used in practice, but she had lost the last two sparring sessions and was eager to prove herself.

"Sorry," Natasha found herself saying and she paused to give Clint time to get back on his feet. But Clint spun around for a sweep kick instead. Natasha easily jumped over his leg and swung her leg up to connect with the side of Clint's head, though pulling back enough not to hurt him. "You okay?" she immediately asked afterwards.

"You know…" Clint said, pulling himself up to a sitting position, "sparring practice is less effective if you keep stopping to ask if I'm okay." He raised his hand for her to grab and help him to his feet.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not in it today," Natasha said as she took his hand. And it was true – the moment she thought she might have hurt Clint the aggression just drained right out of her.

"I know what you're into from earlier," Clint said, pulling her down to him and giving her a kiss.

Natasha did not resist, but allowed herself to be pulled down onto the floor.

Thirty minutes later, Clint and Natasha came back upstairs, panting heavily. Clint went to the kitchen to get them water to drink, as they were both feeling dehydrated after their revised workout.

"How did that go?" Ivan asked.

"Great," she said, which was true enough. She noticed some ash in the ashtray that was not there before and a whiff of air freshener in the air, but kept it to herself. "And how are you doing, my little rebenok?" Natasha asked, squatting down in front of Yelena on the couch and playing with her toes.

"I think she needs some daddy-daughter time!" Clint said, handing off a glass of water to his wife as he scooped Yelena up off the couch. Though he had a good grip on her, he spun her around the room with mock-carelessness. "Oh, look at that! I think our daughter's going to be able to fly! Oh, but she's got no sense of direction! She's flying randomly in circles! Look, it's Ultron! Take that, Ultron!" he said as he pretended to make her fly into the back of an empty chair. "Oh no, now she's turning on me!" he added as he rolled onto the ground, hoisting a giggling, wiggling daughter up over his face.

"If you don't need me, I'll be steppink' out for a bit," Ivan said, getting up to leave.

Natasha nodded to let Ivan know she had heard him, but she was smiling and watching Clint from the couch while still holding her half-finished glass of water in her hand. She loved watching how good he was with Yelena.

However, as soon as Ivan was out of the house, Clint stopped giving Yelena tummy-kisses and said, "I don't fully trust Ivan, you know," in a low voice.

"Don't be silly," Natasha said in an equally low voice. "He's just going outside to finish his smoke. You know, lots of parents let people smoke around their babies." Natasha recalled how hard giving up smoking had been for her, but she had done that back in '69 because it was giving her shortness of breath and not because Clint had insisted.

"Not my baby," Clint said defensively. "But it's not just that. You know, I still can't find my Avengers phone. What if he took it?"

Natasha sighed. "You said yourself phones were meant to have cords so you don't lose them. I'll help you look for it later. I'm sure it's around here somewhere." She sat down her glass on a coaster and got up to leave.

"Are you going to look for it now?"

"No."

"Are you making me something to eat?"

"Soon. I'll be right back…"

Natasha wrote more in her journal.

Clint doesn't trust Ivan, but Clint is suspicious of everyone. Ivan isn't being 100% honest with me, but it might just be trivial things like sneaking a smoke around Yelena.

She lay there, thinking about what to write a while longer before inscribing:

I'm afraid I've lost my edge. I've been awful, as uncoordinated as a raw recruit, in practice with Clint for three days in a row now.

She stared at those words until she heard a knock on her open door. Looking up, she saw it was Ivan. She closed her book with purposeful casualness.

"May I speak to you? Privately?" Ivan asked, hesitantly.

"Sure. Come in," Natasha said. She sat up on the edge of the bed. If she was aware that she was still wearing her old lingerie-like costume, she did not seem to notice.

"I…feel there is some," Ivan stammered awkwardly, "…oh, what's the word? Discomfort I am causink' in your home."

"No. No, that's not it at all," Natasha lied, standing up and resting her hand on Ivan's arm.

"You are sure your husband does not mind havink' ex-KGB as a houseguest?"

"Don't forget that I'm ex-KGB too and he's crazy about me."

"Da…yes, I can see that. But…" and here Ivan looked away, as if unsure he should speak.

"No," Natasha said, holding Ivan where he was before he could turn away. "What is it?"

"I am just thinkink' that what I am seeink' here is a happy American housewife and not at all the ruthless spy I knew. I do not see the fire of Natasha Romanova."

Natasha started to protest but then relaxed, pulling her hand away from his arm. How interesting, she thought, that she had been watching him to make sure he was the real Ivan, and here he was questioning her identity. She sighed. "No, you're right. Can I…can I confide in you about something?"

"Of course you can. I hope you still think of me like I am beink' family. You can tell me anythink'."

"It's Clint," Natasha said quietly. "I respected him as Hawkeye, as an Avenger, before I fell in love with him. But as just Clint Batson…well, there was frankly never that much attraction there. But now, the way he's become such a good father? And how good he is with Yelena? And more attentive to my needs. When I see that I'm just so…attracted to him. It's powerful, you know, how turned on I–"

"Ah, I just remembered there was somethink' I need to be doink'…." Ivan said as he flushed red and ran out of the room.

"Ivan – wait!" Natasha said as she chased after him.

The chase led back through the house to the living room where Clint, still in his Hawkeye uniform but without his mask, was patting Yelena on the back. "Hey, you two!" he said and then to Natasha alone he said, "I thought he was outside? Never mind." When he saw Ivan was about to leave, he added, "Hey, hey, come back. Natasha, did you talk to him about…?"

"What?" Natasha asked, suddenly exasperated.

"You know…" Clint said, trying to be subtle. But when that was not working, he handed off Yelena to Natasha and turned on Ivan. "She was going to ask you if you've seen a special phone lying around here. It's like one of those brand new cellular phones, but smaller."

"And you think I have it?" Ivan asked.

"No, no he doesn't think that," Natasha interjected, stepping between the two men while still holding Yelena to her chest.

"Well, actually…" Clint began.

"I have it," Natasha said. She closed her eyes and listened to the awkward pause around her. "I hid it. Two days ago. It's in my closet."

"What?" Clint asked. "All this time you let me think Ivan was up to no good? And what if there was an emergency and I was needed on Avengers business?"

"Oh please, you didn't even know it was missing until today. I've been checking my phone for emergency messages the past two days. And ever since we gave our emergency numbers to the Fantastic Four, half your calls have just been invitations to Ben Grimm's poker nights."

"It's important to be a part of the superhero community in non-emergencies too," Clint said, annoyed to be revisiting this argument. "Now why on Earth did you take it? I haven't even been losing that much."

"No, it's not that. It's…I've just really liked this, you know? Us being home together. You and me and Yelena…and even Ivan."

"How is Ivan family?"

"He's like family to me! And like a godfather to Yelena. In fact, would you like to be her godfather, Ivan?"

"I'd be honored."

"Don't change the subject," Clint said. "So, hiding my phone, being s- ….being sexy," he said in an awkward tone, uncomfortable saying the word in front of both Ivan and Yelena. "It was all to get me to stay home more often?"

"No, that's –" Natasha started to protest, but Yelena was disturbed by the harsh tones coming from her father and started to wail.

Clint took Yelena who immediately started to calm down. This was, of course, because her father was calming down, but to Natasha it felt like they were siding against her.

"We'll be playing with dolls. For a long time," Clint said coldly as he stalked off to Yelena's room.

Natasha, alone now in the living room with Ivan, looked down and avoided his gaze.

"I must say," Ivan said at last, after lighting up another cigarette, "I may not have seen the old fire of Natasha Romanova in you before…but using sex to get results? Now that is the spy I remembered."

Natasha did not try to protest this time. Instead she just left and wandered back to the bedrooms at the rear of the house. She heard Clint in Yelena's room, making her laugh by talking for her stuffed animals. She smiled, still endeared to it, but not turned on by it this time. She returned to the master bedroom and saw she had left her journal sitting closed on the bed. She flipped it open to where she had left off, found the pencil she had been using earlier, and added:

Tomorrow, in practice, I go back to kicking his butt.

Next: In Black Widow #14: The Sentinels have returned, the Avengers need information and Black Widow turns to the X-Men for help. Find out where the X-Men fit into the 1970s-verse in "I'll Take You There"!


End file.
